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STOEIES OF 
INTENTORS and DISCOVERERS 

IN 

SCIENCE AND THE USEFUL ARTS. 

A BOOK FOR OLD AND YOUNG. 

l/' 

BY JOHN TIMES, F.S.A. 
iDitl) JfUustrations. 




The First Practical Steam-boat. 



'Justice exacts that those by whom we are most benefited should be most 
honored." — Dk. Johnson's Rambler. 



NEW YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 



S'BANKLIN SQUABB. 



I8 60. 



A 






s 




TO THE EEADER 



Sib Humpheey Davy, in his last work of charming 
philosophy, remarks : " The beginning of civilization is 
the discovery of some useful arts, by which men acquire 
property, comforts, or luxuries. The necessity or desire 
of preserving them leads to laws and social institutions. 
The discovery of peculiar arts gives superiority to par- 
ticular nations ; and the love of power induces them to 
employ this superiority to subjugate other nations, who 
learn their arts, and ultimately adopt their manners ; so 
that, in reality, the origin as well as the progress and im- 
provement of civil society is founded in mechanical and 
chemical inventions!''"^ This remark was made thirty 
years ago ; and the foresight of the author is proved by 
his words having since become still stronger evidence of 
his position than at the time they were written. You 
will not, therefore, be surprised to find the majority of 
these " Stories of Inventors and Discoverers" selected 
from the recorded triumphs of Mechanics and Chemistry. 

Although the Sixty Narratives which are the staple 
of the present volume range through ages — from Ar- 
chimedes to Isambard Kingdom Brunei — they, for the 
most part, consist of modern instances. The earlier rec- 
ords have, however, proved rich in what may be termed 
the Curiosities of Invention, among which it is not diffi- 
cult to find many a germ of later success. In many 
cases, too, the moderns have repaid what they owed to 

* Consolations in Travel; or^ the Last Days of a Philosopher . "By 
Sir Humphrey Davy, Bart. 



Vlll TO THE EEAX>ER. 

their predecessors by throwing new light upon some of 
the boasted wonders of ancient ingenuity; and this 
mode of illustration has been specially attended to in the 
present work. In each instance also it has been sought, 
as far as practicable, to bring the narrative down to the 
science of our own time. 

The antiquities of such subjects are curious, and in- 
teresting to a large class of readers : as in the cases of 
Printing and Gunpowder; the Art of Navigating the 
Air and Living under Water ; the marvels of Automata; 
and a host of '' Secret Inventions" besides those of John. 
Napier. 

Occasionally it has been but justice to set in their 
proper light the merits of old workers — as in " The True 
History of Friar Bacon," who was a reformer of science 
centuries before his more illustrious namesake, Francis 
Lord Bacon. In the " Story of Paracelsus," too, a 
proper estimate is attempted of his discoveries, which 
have been, in some instances, obscured by his quackery. 

To the next group of Inventors — of the times of the 
Civil War and the Restoration — a sort of romantic in- 
terest attaches ; whether in the philosophical pursuits of 
Prince Rupert beside his forge in the keep of Windsor 
Castle, or in importing " Rupert's Drops ;" in the recre- 
ations of Sir Samuel Morland, " Master of Mechanics" to 
Charles 11., or in the Century of Inventions by the Mar- 
quis of Worcester, who by this rational means beguiled 
the captivity in the Tower of London to which his loy- 
alty had consigned him. His " Water-commanding En- 
gine" is believed to have been one of the results of that 
period. 

In " the separate, simultaneous, and yet mutually de- 
pendent progress of industry" in the latter half of last 
century, several instances have been gathered, at the 



TO THE READER. IX 

head of which is that of " Watt, who, poor in worldly 
wealth, bat possessed of mental riches vouchsafed to 
few, was then wishing to realize an idea destined to ef- 
fect more surprising results in the history of Britain than 
the wars, alliances, and legislation of centuries."* Then, 
what a series of sufferings and conflicts with jealousy 
and ignorance can be traced in the progress of the Cotton 
Manufacture, consummated by Watt's great invention ! 

To a somewhat earlier period belong the perils of 
John Lombe in his furtive journey to Piedmont, to bring 
over Silk-throwing machinery ; and the story of Lee's 
invention of the Stocking-frame, traceable to the tender- 
est feeling of man — ^his sympathy for " the sole part of 
all his joys." 

In another group of narratives we see how brilliant 
was the success of Davy's Safety-Lamp, and how miser- 
able the fate of poor Carcel ; and how hard was the bat- 
tle which the projectors of Gas-lighting had to fight 
with Parliament-men and men of science ere the new 
light broke forth upon the world. 

Next we have the Era of Engineering, in which our 
country was improved by Canals, Light-houses, and Har- 
bors, Bridges, Breakwaters, and Docks — by Brindley, 
Smeaton, Telford, and Rennie, whose fortunes, as here 
narrated, are so many cheering lessons to striving genius. 

The Steam-boat yields a long and interesting chapter 
— ^from the records of nearly four centuries since to the 
fate of Symington, whose invention led to the earlier ac- 
complishment of Steam Navigation in another country. 

The Railway proved, however, a more secure success 
through the genius of George Stephenson, " once a lo- 
comotive stoker in the north of England, and afterward 
one of the most distinguished engineers of modern times," 
* James Sime, M.A. 



TO THE 

succeeded by his not less distinguished son, Robert Ste- 
phenson, whose genius matured the system which his fa- 
ther had originated. To this group also belong the 
Brunels, father and son, the latter famed for his Railway 
Works and Iron Ship-building. 

The arch-chemic art of Photography, aided by the 
science of the Stereoscope, forms the next chapter ; and 
the work concludes with an account of the Electric Tel- 
egraph, its anticipation and consummation, which is 
crowded with incident. 

Throughout the following pages acknowledgment is 
made of the respective authorities for the facts and state- 
ments in the several narratives, the choice of which has 
been dictated by impartiality and anxiety to be just. 

In tracing the fortunes of Inventors and Discoverers, 
it is painful to note how many have become " Martyrs 
of Science ;" a phrase sometimes misapplied, and which, 
there is reason to hope, will at no very distant time be 
inapplicable. A brighter era is at hand. " Thirty years 
ago there was not a single literary or scientific man who 
enjoyed a pension from the crown, or (with one excep- 
tion) was distinguished by any mark of honor from the 
sovereign. This is happily no longer the case ; for since 
1830 there have been conferred for intellectual services 
thirty titles of honor, and we now find on the Civil List 
the names of nearly fifty distinguished persons. These 
liberal reforms naturally led to others ; mstitutions as 
well as individuals now share in the generosity of the 
state :"* and that scientific men may long continue to 
receive such honors from a country which so largely 
owes its pre-eminence to the applied sciences, is the 
fervent hope of The Authoe. 

* Address of Sir David Brewster, Principal of Edinburgh Univer- 
sity, 1859. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

The Inventions of Archimedes 15 

The Magnet and the Mariner's Compass » 21 

Who invented Printing, and Where? 29 

Who invented Gunpowder? 43 

The Barometer: Torricelli and Pascal 50 

The Air-pump and the Air-gun 55 

Living under Water: the Diving-bell 59 

Automata and Speaking Machines 72 

The Automaton Chess-player 86 

Navigation of the Air: Adventures with the Balloon... 95 

The True History of Friar Bacon 121 

The Discoveries of Leonardo da Vinci 127 

The Story of Paracelsus 132 

Napier's Secret Inventions 136 

Lord Bacon's *' New Philosophy" 141 

Inventions of Prince Kupert 146 

*'Prince Rupert's Drops" 152 

Sir Samuel Morland and his Inventions 156 

The Marquis of Worcester's ''Century of Inventions"... 161 

George Graham and his Improvement of the Watch 170 

John Harrison and the Longitude Watch 175 

Dr. William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood.. 180 

Dr. Jenner and his Discovery of Vaccination 188 

Euler's Powers of Calculation 195 

Mr. George Bidder and Mental Calculation 198 

Calculating Machines 204 

*'TiiE Starry Galileo:" Invention of the Telescope 212 

Isaac Newton makes the first Reflecting Telescope 219 

Guinand's Glass for Achromatic Telescopes 225 

Sir William Herschel and his Telescopes 230 

The Earl of Rosse's Reflecting Telescopes 239 

The Invention of the Microscope 246 



XU CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Sir David Brewster's Kaleidoscope 250 

Magic Mirrors and Burning Lenses 253 

Discovery of the Planet Neptune 25G 

Palisst the Potter 260 

JosiAH Wedgwood and his Wares 268 

"James Watt and the Steam-engine 273 

The Cotton Manufacture : 

Hargreaves and the Spinning Jenny ; Arkwright and 

THE Spinning Frame 296 

Saimuel Crompton and the Spinning Mule 302 

Dr. Cartw^right and the Power-loom 311 

Calico-printing and the Rise of the Peels 313 

Cotton-spinning Machinery 316 

John Lombe and the First Silk-throwing Mill in England 319 

Silk Culture in England 324 

William Lee and the Stocking-frame 328 

Jacquard and his Loom 332 

Dr. Franklin proves the Identity of Lightning and Elec- 
tricity 336 

Chemistry of the Gases : Discovery of Choke-damp and 

Fire-damp 340 

Sir Humphrey Davy and the Safety-lamp 343 

Carcel and his Laiup 352 

Gas-lighting 354 

James Brindley and Canal Navigation 361 

^ John Smeaton: Light-houses and Harbors 365 

Inventions of Joseph Bramah 370 

Thomas Telford and the Menai Suspension Bridge 373 

John Rent^ie : Docks and Bridges 378 

**The First Practical Steam-boat" 382 

Sir Isambard M. Brunel : Block Machinery and the 

Thames Tunnel 396 

George Stephenson, the Railway Engineer 402 

Robert Stephenson and Railway Works 414 

Isambard K. Brunel : Railway Works and Iron Ship- 
building 426 

Photography and the Stereoscope 432 

Caoutchouc and its Manufactures 447 

GUTTA PeRCHA and ITS MANUFACTURES 452 

The Electric Telegraph 456 



LIST OF ENGRAVINGS. 



PAGE 

The Portion of Mr. Babbage's Difference Engine in the Museum 

of King's College, London Frontispiece, 

The first practical Steam-boat Vignette. 

Franklin at his Case 29 

Type of a Letter — Types set up 31 

Casting the Type 34 

An Adams Power-press 37 

The Hand Press 40 

The Roller 41 

The Composing-stick 42 

Jacob Degen's Flying Machine 94 

M. Laurent's Bird Machine 97 

The first Montgolfier 101 

De Rozier's Balloon 102 

The first Ascension on Horseback 105 

Testu-Brissy's Balloon 108 

The French Academy's Balloon 109 

Blanchard's Flying Machine 114 

Cockiijg's Parachute Misfortune 114 

Petin's projected Grand Flying Machine 118 

Besnier's Flying Machine 120 

Portrait of Roger Bacon 121 

*^ Bacon's .Folly," Oxford 126 

Portrait of John Napier, of Merchiston 136 

Prince Rupert, in his Laboratory in Windsor Castle, visited by 

Charles II. Drawn by John Gilbert 149 

Portrait of Edward, Marquis of Worcester 161 

Statue of Dr. Jenner in Trafalgar Square 194 

Newton's first Reflecting Telescope 221 

Statue of Newton at Grantham 223 

Lord Rosse's great Reflecting Telescope at Parsonstown 245 

Portrait of Palissy the Potter 263 



XIV LIST OF ENGRAVINGS. 

PAGB 

Wedgwood's first Pottery 263 

Arkwright's Mills, from Cromford Heights 30 1 

Portrait of Samuel Crompton, Inventor of the Spinning Mule .... 304 

The Hall-in-the- Wood, near Bolton 304 

Lombe's Silk-throwing Mill at Derby 325 

Chest in which Lombe brought his Silk machinery from Pied- 
mont 325 

Sir H. Davy's Model Safety-lamp 347 

F . A. Winsor, Projector of Street Gas-lighting 358 

The Thames Tunnel Shield 401 

Cottage at Wylam in which George Stephenson was bom 403 

The Rocket Prize Locomotive 411 

Portraits of George Stephenson and Robert Stephenson, M.P.... 415 

Portraits of Sir I. M.Brunei and I.K.Brunei 415 

Ficus Elastica — Sipponia Elastica 446 

Animals and Plants from the Atlantic Telegraph Plateau 465 



MR. BABBAGE'S DIFFERENCE ENGINE. 

The Frontispiece represents the face of that small portion of Mr. 
Babbage's Difference Engine which is now standing in the Museum 
of King's College. 

In correction of the closing sentence of the last paragraph in page 
207, it should be stated that the portion of the engine in King's Col- 
lege is in order, and is capable of calculating to five figures, and two 
orders of difterenccs, at the rate of 12 or 14 arguments and corre- 
sponding tabular numbers per minute; and neither the number of 
orders of differences, nor the number of digits, would make any dif- 
ference in its rate of work. 

Without numerous carefully lettered and figured mechanical draw- 
ings, it would be impossible properly to describe the elaborate mech- 
anism of this engine ; it has, indeed, been found impossible for one 
competent mechanic, who has fully mastered eveiy portion, to explain 
the machine itself to another equally competent mechanic without the 
devotion of considerable time. 

There is a very commonly entertained, and certainly a very natural 
notion that Mr. Babbage's '* Analytical Engine" (see page 207) is an 
improvement (we were going to say a mere improvement) on his 
*' Difference Engine." 

This is altogether a mistake, there being scarcely less connection 
between a clock and a steam-engine : the two entirely different en- 
gines of Mr. Babbage merely follow one another in order of time, 
though, of course, the mechanical experience he acquired during the 
progress of the one must have been of the greatest assistance while 
contriving the separate portions of the other. 



STORIES 

OF 

INVENTORS AND DISCOVERERS. 



THE INVENTIONS OF AECHIMEDES. 

It is scarcely possible to view the vast steam-ships of 
our day without reflecting that to a great master of Me- 
chanics, upward of 2000 years since, we in part owe the 
invention of the machine by which these mighty vessels 
are propelled upon the wide world of waters. This pow- 
er is an application of " the Screw of Archimedes," the 
most celebrated of the Greek geometricians. He was 
born in Sicily, in the Corinthian colony of Syracuse, in 
the year 287 B.C., and, when a very young man, was for- 
tunate enough to enjoy the patronage of his relative, Hi- 
ero, the reigning Prince of Syracuse. 

The ancients attribute to Archimedes more than forty 
mechanical inventions, among which are the endless 
screw ; the combination of pulleys ; an hydraulic organ, 
according to TertulHan ; a machine called the helix^ or 
screw, for launching ships ; and a machine called loculus^ 
which appears to have consisted of forty pieces, by the 
putting together of which various objects could be 
framed, and which was used by boys as a sort of arti- 
ficial memory. 

Archimedes is said to have obtained the friendship 
and confidence of Hiero by the following incident. The 
king had delivered a certain weight of gold to a work- 
man to be made into a crown. When the crown was 
made and sent to the king, a suspicion arose in the royal 
mind that the gold had been adulterated by the alloy of 
a baser metal, and he applied to Archimedes for his as- 
sistance in detecting the imposture : the difiiculty was 



16 HIERO S CROWN. 

to measure the bulk of the crown without melting it into 
a regular figure ; for silver being, weight for weight, of 
greater bulk than gold, any alloy of the former in place 
of an equal weight of the latter would necessarily in- 
crease the bulk of the crown ; and at that time there was 
no known means of testing the purity of metal. Archi- 
medes, after many unsuccessful attempts, was about to 
abandon the object altogether, when the following cu'- 
cumstance suggested to his discerning and prepared mind 
a train of thought which led to the solution of the dif- 
ficulty. Stepping into his bath one day, as was his cus- 
tom, his mind doubtless fixed on the object of his re- 
search, he chanced to observe that, the bath being full, 
a quantity of water of the same bulk as his body must 
flow over before he could immerse himself. He proba- 
bly perceived that any other body of the same bulk 
would have raised the water equally; but that another 
body of the same weight, but less bulky, would not have 
produced so great an efiect. In the words of Vitruvius, 
" as soon as he had hit upon this method of detection, he 
did not wait a moment, but jumped joyfully out of the 
bath, and running forthwith toward his own house, call- 
ed out with a loud voice that he had found what he 
sought. For as he ran, he called out, in Greek, Eureka ! 
Eureka ! ' I have found it out ! I have found it out !' " 
When his emotion had sobered down, he proceeded to 
investigate the subject calmly. He procured two mass- 
es of metal, each of equal weight vrith the crown — one 
of gold, and the other of silver; and having filled a ves- 
sel very accurately with water, he plunged into it the 
silver, and marked the exact quantity of water that over- 
flowed. He then treated the gold in the same manner, 
and observed that a less quantity of water overflowed 
than before. He next plunged the crown into the same 
vessel full of water, and observed that it displaced more 
of the fluid than the gold had done, and less than the 
silver ; by which he inferred that the crown was neither 
pure gold nor pure silver, but a mixture of both. Hiero 
was so gratified with this result as to declare that from 
that moment he could never refuse to believe any thing 
Archimedes told him.* 

* Galileo, while studying the hydrostatical treatise of Archimedes, 



THE SCKEW OF ARCHIMEDES. 17 

Traveling into Egypt, and observing the necessity of 
raising the water of the Nile to points which the river 
did not reach, as well as the difficulty of clearing the 
land from the periodical overflowings of the Nile, Archi- 
medes invented for this purpose the Screw which bears 
his name. It was likewise used as a pump to clear water 
from the holds of vessels ; and the name of Archimedes 
was held in great veneration by seamen on this account. 
The screw may be briefly described as a long spiral with 
its lower extremity immersed in the water, which, rising 
along the channels by the revolution of the machine on 
its axis, is discharged at the upper extremity. When ap- 
plied to the propulsion of steam vessels, the screw is hor- 
izontal ; and, being put in motion by a steam-engine, 
drives the water backward, when its reaction, or return, 
propels the vessel. 

The mechanical ingenuity of Archimedes was next 
displayed in the various machines which he constructed 
for the defense of Syracuse during a three years' siege 
by the Romans. Among these inventions were cata- 
pults for throwing arrows, and balistse for throwing 
masses of stone ; and iron hands or hooks attached to 
chains, thrown to catch the prows of the enemy's ves- 
sels, and then overturn them. He is likewise stated to 
have set their vessels on fire by burning-glasses : this, 
however, rests upon modern authority, and Archimedes is 
rather believed to have set the ships on fire by machines 
for throwing lighted materials. 

After the storming of Syracuse, Archimedes was killed 
by a Roman soldier, who did not know who he was. The 
soldier inquired ; but the philosopher, being intent upon 
a problem, begged that his diagram might not be dis- 
turbed; upon which the soldier put him to death. At 
his own request, expressed during his Ufe, a sphere in- 

wrote his Essay on the Hydrostatic Balance, in which he describes 
the construction of the instrument, and the method by which Archi- 
medes detected the fraud committed by the jeweler in the composition 
of Hiero's crown. This work gained for its author the esteem of 
Guido Ubaldi, who had distinguished himself by his mechanical and 
mathematical acquirements, and who engaged his young friend to in- 
vestigate the subject of the centre of gravity in solid bodies. The 
treatise on this subject, which Galileo presented to his patron, proved 
the source of his future success in life. 



18 THE TOMB OF ARCHIIMEDES. 



, in I 

)f a! 



scribed in a cylinder was sculptured on his tomb, 
memory of his discovery that the solid contents of a 
sphere is exactly two thirds of that of the circumscribing 
cyhnder ; and by this means the memorial was afterward 
identified. One hundred and fifty years after the death 
of Archimedes, when Cicero was residing in Sicily, he 
paid homage to his forgotten tomb. " During my quses- 
torship," says this illustrious Roman, " I diligently sought 
to discover the sepulchre of Archimedes, which the Syr- 
acusans had totally neglected, and sufiered to be grown 
over with thorns and briers. Recollecting some verses, 
said to be inscribed on the tomb, which mentioned that 
on the toj) was placed a sphere with a cylinder, 1 looked 
round me upon every object at the Agragentine Gate, 
the common receptacle of the dead. At last I observed 
a little column which just rose above the thorns, upon 
which was placed the figure of a sphere and cylinder. 
This, said I to the Syracusan nobles who were with me, 
this must, I think, be what I am seeking. Several per- 
sons were immediately employed to clear away the weeds, 
and lay open the spot. As soon as a passage was open- 
ed, we drew near, and found on the opposite base the 
inscription, with nearly half the latter part of the verses 
worn away. Thus would this most famous, and formerly 
most learned city of Greece have remained a stranger to 
the tomb of one of its most ingenious citizens, had it not 
been discovered by a man of Arpinum." 

To Archimedes is attributed the apophthegm, "Give 
me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough, and 
with my own weight I will move the world." This arose 
from his knowledge of the possible efiects of machinery ; 
but, however it might astonish a Greek of his day, it 
would now be admitted to be as theoretically possible as 
it is practically impossible. Archimedes would have re- 
quired to move with the velocity of a cannon ball for 
millions of ages to alter the position of the earth by the 
smallest part of an inch. In mathematical truth, how- 
ever, the feat is performed by every man who leaps from 
the ground ; for he kicks the world away when he rises, 
and attracts it again when he falls back.* 

* Ozanam has taken the trouble to calculate the time which would 
be required to move the earth one inch ; he makes it 3, 653, 745, 176, 803 
centuries. 



HIEROS GALLEY. 19 

Under the superintendence of Archimedes was also 
built the renowned Galley for Hiero. It was construct- 
ed to half its height by 300 master workmen and their 
servants in six months. Hiero then directed that the 
vessel should be perfected afloat; but how to get the 
vast pile into the water the builders knew not, till Ar- 
chimedes invented his engine called the Helix, by which, 
with the assistance of very few hands, he drew the ship 
into the sea, where it was completed in six months. 
The ship consumed wood enough to build sixty large 
galleys ; it had twenty tiers of bars, and three decks ; 
the middle deck had on each side fifteen dining apart- 
ments, besides other chambers, luxuriously furnished, 
and floors paved with mosaics of the story of the Iliad. 
On the upper deck were gardens, with arbors of ivy and 
vines; and here was a temple of Venus, paved with 
agates, and roofed with Cyprus wood: it was richly 
adorned with pictures and statues, and furnished with 
couches and drinking vessels. Adjoining was an apart- 
ment of box-wood, with a clock in the ceiling, in imita- 
tion of the great dial of Syracuse ; and here was a huge 
bath set with gems called Tauromenites. There were 
also, on each side of this deck, cabins for the marine sol- 
diers, and twenty stables for horses; in the forecastle 
was a fresh-water cistern, which held 253 hogsheads; 
and near it was a large tank of sea-water, in which fish 
were kept. From the ship's sides projected ovens, 
kitchens, mills, and other ofiices, built upon beams, each 
supported by a carved image nine feet high. Around 
the deck were eight wooden towers, from each of which 
was raised a breastwork full of loop-holes, whence an 
enemy might be annoyed with stones ; each tower being 
guarded by four armed soldiers and two archers. On 
this upper deck was also placed the machine invented by 
Archimedes to fling stones of 300 pounds weight, and 
darts eighteen feet long, to the distance of 120 paces; 
while each of the three masts had two engines for throw- 
ing stones. The ship was furnished with four anchors 
of wood and eight of iron ; and " the Water-Screw" of 
Archimedes, already mentioned, was used instead of a 
pump for the vast ship, "by the help of which one man 
might easily and speedily drain out the water, though it 



20 ARCHIMEDES, THE HOMER OF GEOMETRY. 

were very deep." The whole ship's company consisted 
of an immense multitude, there being in the forecastle 
alone 600 seamen. There were placed on board her 
60,000 bushels of corn, 10,000 barrels of salt fish, and 
20,000 barrels of flesh, besides the provisions for her ji 
company. She was first called the Syracuse, but after- H 
ward the Alexandria. The builder was Archias, the 
Corinthian shipwright. The vessel appears to have been 
armed for war, and sumptuously fitted for a pleasure 
yacht, yet was ultimately used to carry corn. The tim- 
ber for the mainmast, after being in vain sought for in 
Italy, was brought from England. The dimensions are 
not recorded, but they must have exceeded those of any 
ship of the present day : indeed, Hifero, finding that none 
of the surrounding harbors sufiiced to receive his vast 
ship, loaded it with corn, and presented the vessel, with 
its cargo, to Ptolemy, King of Egypt ; and on arriving 
at Alexandria it was hauled ashore, and nothing more is 
recorded respecting it. A most elaborate description of 
this vast ship has been preserved to us by Athenaeus, and 
translated into English by Burchett, in his Naval Trans- 
actions. 

Archimedes has been styled the Homer of Geometry ; 
yet it must not be concealed that he fell into the prevail- 
ing error of the ancient philosophers, that geometry was 
degraded by being employed to produce any thing use- 
ful. " It was with difiiculty," says Lord Macaulay, " that 
he was induced to stoop from speculation to practice. 
He was half ashamed of those inventions which were the 
wonder of hostile nations, and always spoke of them 
slightingly, as mere amusements, as trifles in which a 
mathematician might be suffered to relax his mind after 
intense application to the higher parts of his science." 



THE MAGNET AND THE MAEINEK'S 
COMPASS. 

The vast service of which Magnetism is to man may- 
be said to have commenced by supplying him with that 
invaluable instrument, the Mariner^ s Compass. Mr. Hal- 
lam characterizes it as " a property of a natural sub- 
stance, which, long overlooked, even though it attracted 
observation by a different peculiarity, has influenced by 
its accidental discovery the fortunes of mankind more 
than all the deductions of philosophy." 

Before we describe the discovery of the Compass, we 
shall briefly explain the source from which its power and 
usefulness are derived. The Magnet is a metallic body, 
possessing the remarkable property of attracting iron 
and some other metals. It is said to have been found 
abundantly at Magnesia, in Lydia, from which circum- 
stance its name may have been derived. The term na- 
tive magnet is applied to the loadstone^ which appears to 
be derived from an Icelandic term, leider-stein^ signifying 
the leading-stone^ so designated from the stony particles 
found connected with it. India and Ethiopia formerly 
furnished great quantities of this native magnet. Tiger 
Island, at the mouth of the Canton River, in China, is in 
great measure made up of this ore, as mariners infer from 
the circumstance of the needles of their compasses being 
much affected by their proximity to the island. In the 
earliest times there were reputed to be five distinct kinds 
of loadstone — the Ethiopian, the Magnesian^ the Boeotic, 
the Alexandrian, and the Natolian. It is also found 
abundantly in the iron mines of Sweden, in America, and 
sometimes, though rarely, among the iron ores of En- 
gland. The ancients also believed the loadstone to be 
of two species, male and female. " We read," says Tom- 
linson, " of its being used in the Middle Ages medicinally 
— to cure sore eyes and to procure purgation. Even in 
modern times plasters have been made from this ore. 



22 TRADITIONS OF THE MAGNET. 

and much other quackery has been perpetrated by its 
means."* 

The attracting power of the Magnet was known at a 
very early period, as references are made to it by Aris- 
totle, and more particularly by Pliny, who states that ig- 
norant persons call itferrum vivimi^ or quick iron, a name 
somewhat analogous to our loadstone. The same author 
appears to have been acquainted with the power of the 
magnet to communicate properties similar to its own to 
other bodies. The polarity of the Magnetic Needle, that 
is, the power of taking a particular direction when freely 
suspended, escaped the notice of the Greeks and Romans 
of antiquity, but the Chinese appear to have been ac- 
quainted with it from a very early date. 

We are not surprised to find so mysterious an agency i 
as the Magnet exercises to have been referred to acci- 1 
dental origin. The ancient Greeks represent one Mag- 
nes, a shepherd, leading his flocks to Mount Ida: he 
stretched himself upon the green-sward to take repose, 
and left his crook, the upper part of which was made of 
iron, leaning against a large stone. When he awoke and 
arose to depart, he found, on attempting to take up his 
crook, that the iron adhered to the stone. He communi- 
cated this fact to some philosophers of the time, and they 
called the stone, after the name of the shepherd, Magnes, 
tJie Magnet^ which it retains to the present day. It is, 
however, denominated among many nations the love- 
stone^ from its apparent aflection for iron. 

A tradition of very ancient date still exists among the 
Chinese respecting a mountain of magnetic oref rising in 
the midst of the sea, whose intensity of attraction is so 
great as to draw the nails and iron bands, with which the 
planks of the ship are fastened together, from their places 
with great force, and cause the ship to fall to pieces. 

* It has been observed that the smallest natural magnets generally 
possess the greatest proportion of attractive power. The magnet worn 
by Sir Isaac Newton, in his ring, weighed only three grains, yet it was 
able to take up 746 grains, or nearly 250 times its own weight ; where- 
as magnets weighing above two pounds seldom lift more than five or 
six times their own weight. 

t European writers in general attribute the history of magnetic 
mountains to the Moors; and reference to the supposition may be 
found even in writers of the seventeenth centurv\ 



MAGNETIC CARS. 23 

This tradition is very general throughout Asia ; and the 
Chinese historians place the mountain in Tchang-hai, the 
southern sea, between Tunkin and Cochin China. Ptol- 
emy also, in a remarkable passage in his Geography, 
places this mountain in the Chinese seas. In a work at- 
tributed to St. Ambrose, there is an account of one of the 
islands of the Persian Gulf, called Mammoles, in which 
the magnet is found ; and the precaution necessary to be 
taken (of building ships without iron) to navigate in that 
vicinity is distinctly specified. It should also be added 
that the Chinese writers place this magnetic mountain 
in precisely the same geographical region that the au- 
thor of the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor does, which is 
to be regarded as a confirmation of the Oriental origin 
of a great number of tales, half fiction, half fact, which 
are so universally diffused among the legendary literature 
of every language as to seem indigenous in each of them. 
It is extremely probable (says Humboldt) that Europe 
owes the knowledge of the northern and southern di- 
recting powers of the Magnetic Needle — the use of the 
Mariner's Compass — to the Arabs, and that these people 
were, in turn, indebted for it to the Chinese. In the 
Chinese historical Szuki of Szumathsian, who lived in the 
earlier half of the second century before our era, we meet 
with an allusion to the " magnetic cars," which the em- 
peror had given more than 900 years earlier to the em- 
bassadors from Tunkin and Cochin China, that they might 
not miss their way on their return home.* In the fourth 
century of our era, Chinese ships employed the magnet 
to guide their course safely across the open sea ; and it 
was by means of these vessels that the knowledge of the 
compass was carried to India, and from thence to the 
eastern coasts of Africa. The Arabic designations Zoron 
and Aphron (south and north), which Vincenzius of Beau- 
vais gives, in his Mirror of Nature^ to the two ends of 
the Magnetic Needle, indicate, like many Arabic names 
of stars which we still employ, the channel and the peo- 
ple from whom Western countries received the elements 
of their knowledge. In Christian Europe, the first nien- 

* Maurice, in his Indian Antiquities, describes this instrument as a 
sort of magnetic index, which the Chinese called Chimans ; a name by 
which they at this day denominate the Mariner's Compass. 



24 USE OF THE MAKINEb's COMPASS. 

tion of the use of the Magnetic Needle occurs in the po- 
litico-satirical poem called La JBihle^ by Guyot of Pro- 
vence, in 1 190 ; and in the description of Palestine, by Ja- 
cobus of Vitry, Bishop of Ptolemais, between 1204 and 
1215. Dante (in his Par,^ xii., 29) refers, in a simile, to 
the needle {ago) " which points to the star." Navarrete 
quotes a remarkable passage in the Spanish Leyes de las 
Partidas of the middle of the thirteenth century : " The 
needle which guides the seaman in the dark night, and 
shows him, both in good and in bad weather, how to di- 
rect his course, is the intermediate agent {medianera) be- 
tween the loadstone {lapiedra) and the north star." 

Humboldt considers it striking that the use of the 
south direction of the Needle should have been first ap- 
plied in eastern Asia, not to navigation, but to land trav- 
eling. In the anterior part of the Magnetic Wagon, a 
freely-floating needle moved the arm and hand of a small 
figure, which pointed tow^ard the south. Klaproth, whose 
researches upon this curious subject have been confirm- 
ed by Biot and Stanislas Julien, adduces an old tradition, 
according to which the Magnetic Wagon was already in 
use in the reign of the Emperor Honngti, presumed to 
have lived 2600 years before our era; but no allusion to 
this tradition can be found in any writers prior to the 
early Christian ages. 

The Magnetic Wagon was used as late as the fifteenth 
century. Several of these carriages were carefully pre- 
served in the Chinese imperial palace, and were employ- 
ed in the building of Buddhist monasteries in fixing the 
points toward which the main sides of the edifice should 
be directed. 

As the excessive mobility of the Chinese Needles float- 
ing upon water rendered it difiicult to note down the in- 
dications which they afibrded, another arrangement was 
adopted in their place as early as the twelfth century of 
our era, in which the Needle, which was freely suspend- 
ed in the air, was attached to a fine cotton or silken 
thread, and by means of this more perfect apparatus, the 
Chinese, as early as the beginning of the twelfth century, 
determined the amount of the western variation of the 
needle. From its use on land, the Compass was finally 
adapted to maritime purposes. When it had become 



USE OF THE MAEINER'S COMPASS. 25 

general throughout the Indian Ocean, along the shores 
of Persia and Arabia, it was introduced into the West, 
in the twelfth century, either directly through the influ- 
ence of the Arabs, or through the agency of the Cru- 
saders, who, since 1096, had been brought into contact 
with Egypt and the true Oriental regions. The most 
essential share in its use seems to have belonged to the 
Moorish pilots, the Genoese, Venetians, Major cans, and 
Catalans. The old story, that Marco Polo first brought 
the Compass into Europe, has long been disproved : as 
he traveled from 1271 to 1295, it is evident, from the 
testimony we have quoted, that the Compass was, at all 
events, used in European seas from sixty to seventy years 
before Marco Polo set forth on his journeyings. 

Dr. Gilbert, who was physician in ordinary to Queen 
Elizabeth, states that P. Venutus brought a Compass 
from China in 1260. Gilbert bestowed much attention 
upon magnetism, and to some extent inculcated the doc- 
trine of gravitation, by comparing the earth to a great 
magnet. The term " poles of a magnet" arose from his 
theory, which is remarkably consonant with the notions 
of the present day. 

The discovery of the Compass was long ascribed to 
Flavio Gioja, of Positano, in 1302, not far from the love- 
ly town of Amalfi, on the coast of Calabria, and whicli 
town was rendered so celebrated by its widely-extended 
maritime laws. The Compass was then a rude and sim- 
ple instrument, being only an iron needle magnetized, 
and stuck in a bit of wood, floating in a vessel of water ; 
in which artificial and inconvenient form it seems to have 
remained till about the beginning of the fourteenth cen- 
tury, when Flavio Gioja made the great improvement of 
suspending the needle on a centre, and inclosing it in a 
box. The advantages of this were so great that it was 
universally adopted, and the instrument in its old and 
simple form laid aside and forgotten; hence Gioja in 
after times came to be considered as the inventor of the 
Mariner's Compass, of which he was only the improver. 
He lived in the reign of Charles of Anjou, who died King 
of Naples in 1509. It was in compliment to this sover- 
eign (for Amalfi is in the dominion of Naples) that Gioja 
distinguished the north point by a flcur-dc-Hs ; and this 

B 



26 VARIATION OF THE NEEDLE. 

was one of the circumstances by which, in France, im 
later days, it was endeavored to prove that the Mariner' si 
Compass was a French discovery. I 

Guyot of Provence, the French poet, who lived a centu-l 
ry earlier than Flavio Gioja, or, at the latest, under St. 
Louis, describes the polarity of the Magnet in the most 
unequivocal language. Evidence of the earlier use of the 
Compass in European seas than at the beginning of the 
fourteenth century is also furnished by a nautical treatis^ 
of Raymond LuUy, of Majorca, who was at once a phil-' 
osophical systematizer and an analytic chemist, a skillful 
mariner and a successful propagator of Christianity ; in 
1286 he remarked that the seamen of his time employed 
" instruments of measurement, sea-charts, and the mag- 
netic needle." 

The application of the Compass to the purposes of 
navigation, doubtless, speedily led to the discovery of the 
Variation of the Needle. It must have been known to 
the Chinese as far back as the beginning of the twelfth 
century, as it is mentioned in a work published by a 
Chinese philosopher, named Keon-tsoung-chy, who wrote 
about the year 1111 (Sir Snow Harris's liitdimentary 
Magnetism), In the Life of Columbus^ written by his 
son, it is distinctly assigned to that celebrated man ; and 
though its amount at this period must have been small 
in France, Spain, etc., yet it was doubtless a very ob- 
servable quantity in many of the regions visited by Co- 
lumbus. 

It is remarkable that Columbus noticed the Variation 
of the Needle for the first time when sailing across the 
Atlantic Ocean in his attempt to find a new world. It 
was on the 14th of September, 1492 ; he was perhaps 200 
leagues from land, and the variation was a little to the 
west at London. It appears that Columbus perceived, 
about nightfall, that the needle, instead of pointing to the 
north star, varied about half a point, or between five and 
six degrees, to the northwest, and still more on the fol- 
lowing morning. Struck with this circumstance he ob- 
served it attentively for three days, and found that the 
variation increased as he advanced. He at first made 
no mention of this phenomenon, knowing how ready his 
people were to take alarm ; but it soon filled with con- 



OBSERVATION OP COLUMBUS. 27 

sternation his pilots and mariners, who had leisure on the 
wide ocean for anxiety and curious wonder. It seemed 
as if the very laws of nature were changing as they ad- 
vanced, and that they were entering another world, sub- 
ject to unknown influences. They apprehended that the 
compass was about to lose its mysterious virtues : and 
without this guide, what was to become of them in a vast 
and trackless ocean ? But Columbus was prepared with 
a theory to account for this deviation of the laws of nature, 
as the terrified sailors deemed it to be. The needle was 
not at fault, he said ; for it did not tend to the polar star, 
but to some fixed and unseen point. The Variation, 
therefore, was not caused by any fallacy in the Compass, 
but by the movement of the polar star itself, which, like 
the other heavenly bodies, had its changes and revolu- 
tions, and every day described a circle round the pole. 
The high opinion that the pilots entertained of Columbus 
as a profound astronomer gave weight to his theory, and 
their alarm subsided. As yet the solar system of Coper- 
nicus was unknown ; the explanation of Columbus was 
therefore highly plausible and ingenious, and it shows, 
and we admire, the perspicacity of the man who, with so 
little means, could trace up so fearful an efiect to a cause 
founded partly in truth, and thus meet the emergency 
of the moment. The theory may at first have been ad- 
vanced merely to satisfy the minds of others, but Colum- 
bus appears subsequently to have been satisfied with it 
himself. 

The discovery of a magnetic line without variation is 
due to Columbus. In a letter written in 1498, he says, 
"Each time that I sail from Spain to the Indies I find, 
as soon as I arrive a hundred miles to the west df the 
Azores, an extraordinary alteration in the movements of 
the heavenly bodies, in the temperature of the air, and in 
the character of the ocean ; I have observed these alter- 
ations with particular care, and have recognized that the 
needle of the Mariner's Compass, the deviation of which 
had been northeast^ now turned to the northwestP 

An eloquent writer thus picturesquely illustrates the 
benefits of this great discovery : " In the development 
of the commercial spirit of the Crusades, Providence is 
seen in its most manifest footsteps. Sitting upon the 



28 OBSERVATION OF COLUMBUS. 

floods, it opens to new enterprises. The Compass 
twinkling on its card was a beam from heaven; that 
tiny magnet was given as a seniory of earth and sky. 
Like a new revelation, the mysteries of an unknown 
world were miveiled ; like a new illapse, the bold and 
noble were inspired to lead the way. Dias doubles the 
Cape of Storms ; De Gama finds his course to the East 
Indies ; Columbus treads the Bahamas ; and twelve 
years do not separate these discoveries." 



II 



ji 



I 




Franklin at his Case. 



WHO INVENTED FEINTING, AND WHERE? 

• The inquirers into the origin and history of this al- 
most ubiquitous " noble craft and mystery" would seem 
to have arrived at this conclusion — that it is difficult to 
say at what period of time the art of Printing did not 
exist. The simplest and most natural mode of convey- 
ing an idea is by the reproduction of similar appearances 
from an impression of the same surface ; and whether 
this be by a hand or foot upon snow, or by the pressure 
of wood or metal upon paper or vellum, it is alike ^^rf/^^ 
ing. Accordingly, we find evidence that nearly four 
thousand years since a rude and imperfect method of 
printing was certainly practiced. First, seals were im- 
pressed upon a plastic material ; next, symbols or char- 
acters were stamped upon clay in forming bricks (as 
practiced in Babylon), cyhnders, and the walls of edifices. 
Of this art, Wilkinson and others have brought examples 
from Egypt ; and Rawlinson and Layard from the ruins 
of the buried cities of Asia. Not only have the in- 
scribed bricks been found, but the wooden stamps with 
which they were impressed ; of these numerous speci- 
mens are in the British Museum. Here also may be 
seen several instruments presenting a singular instance 
how very nearly we may approach to an important dis- 



30 PRINTING FROM MOVABLE TYPES. 

covery, and yet miss it. These are brass or bronze 
stamps, having on their faces inscriptions m raised char- 
acters reversed. To the back has been fastened a handle, 
a loop, a boss, or a ring. One use of these stamps has 
evidently been to print the inscription on surfaces, by 
aid of color, upon papyrus, linen, or parchment ; and, as 
the inscriptions show these stamps to have been of the 
period when literature had become one of the pursuits 
of the great, and the copying of books was a slow and 
expensive process, it is strange that the Romans, by, 
whom these signets were used, should not have improved 
upon them by engraving whole sentences and composi- 
tions upon blocks, and thence transferring them to paper. 
The Chinese printing from blocks at this day closely re- 
sembles the old Roman ; and they assert that it was used 
by them several centuries before it was known in Europe 
— in fact, fifty years before the Christian era. 

A vast interval elapses between the above attempts 
and the next advance — engraving pictures upon wooden 
blocks, invented toward the end of the thirteenth century 
by a twin brother and sister of the illustrious family of 
Cunio, lords of Italy : these consisted of nine engravings 
of the " Heroic Actions" of Alexander the Great, and, 
as stated in the title-page, ''^ first reduced, imagined, and 
attempted to be executed in relief, with a small knife, on 
blocks of wood ;" " all this was done and finished by us 
when only sixteen years of age." This title, if genuine, 
presents us at once with the origin, execution, and de- 
sign of the first attempts at block-printing. The next 
earliest evidence is a decree found among the archives 
of the Company of Printers at Venice, dated 1441, relat- 
ing to playing-cards, printed from wood blocks, the im- 
pressions being taken by means of a burnisher. Then, 
instead of a single block, a series of blocks was employ- 
ed, in engravings of the Biblia Paujperum^ the text being 
printed from movable types. 

We have now reached the practice oi printing in the 
present sense of the term. The invention of the movable 
types is disputed by many cities, but only three have the 
slightest claim — Harlem, Strasburg, and Mentz : Harlem 
for Lawrence Koster, who, when " walking in a suburban 
grove, began first to fashion beech-bark into letters, which 




GUTENBERG AND HIS PARTNERS. 31 

being impressed upon pa- 
per, reversed in the man- 
ner of a seal, produced one 
verse, then another, as his 
fancy pleased, to be for 
copies for the children of 
his son-in-law." Next, he, 
with his son-in-law, devised 

Type of a letter. Types set up. ^ u ^ ^^^^ glutiuOUS and tC- 

nacious species of writing-ink, which he had commonly 
used to draw letters ; thence he expressed entire figured 
pictures, with characters added," only on opposite pages, 
not printed on both sides. Afterward he changed beech- 
blocks for lead, and then for tin. The tradition adds 
that an unfaithful servant, having fled with the secret, 
set up for himself at Strasburg or Mentz ; but the whole 
story, which claims the substitution of movable for fixed 
letters as early as 1430, can not be traced beyond the 
middle of the sixteenth century, and is generally discred- 
ited as a romantic fiction. Nevertheless, some have be- 
lieved that a book called Speculum humancB Salvationist 
of very rude wooden characters, proceeded from the Har- 
lem press before any other that is generally recognized. 
Whether movable wooden characters were ever employ- 
ed in any entire work is very questionable ; they appear, 
however, in the capital letters of some early printed 
books. " But," says Hallam, " no expedient of this kind 
could have fulfilled the great purposes of this invention, 
until it was perfected by founding metal types in a ma- 
trix or mould ; the essential characteristic of printing, 
as distinguished from other arts that bear some analogy 
to it." 

The invention is now unhesitatingly ascribed to John 
Gutenberg, a native of Mentz, the evidence of which does 
not rest upon guesses from dateless wood-cuts, but upon 
a legal document, dated 1439, by which it is proved that 
Gutenberg, being engaged " in a wonderful and unknown 
art," admitted certain persons into partnership, one of 
whom dying, his brother claimed to be admitted as his 
successor ; and on Gutenberg's refusal, they brought an 
action against him as principal partner. From the evi- 
dence produced on the trial, it was proved that one of 



32 , THE PRESS. 



I 



the witnesses had been instructed by Gutenberg to " take 
the stucke (pages) from the presses, and, by removing 
two screws, thoroughly separate them from one another, 
so that no man may know what it is." From this curi- 
ous document (says the latest investigator of the sub- 
ject*) may be learned that separate types were used ; 
for if they were block, arranged so as to print four pages 
(as stated in the evidence), how could they be so pulled 
to pieces that no one should know what they were, or 
how could the abstraction of two screws cause them to 
fall to pieces ? We are here reminded that within com- 
paratively few years screws have been substituted for 
quoins, or wedges, in locking up the type in the chases, 
or iron frames, which may be a revival of Gutenberg's 
screw method of 400 years since. 

It seems that some sort of presses were now used, and 
the transfers no longer taken by a burnisher or roller ; 
and, lastly, that the art was still a great secret at the time 
when Koster was at the point of death. Hence it is man- 
ifest that the ingenuity of Gutenberg had made a vast 
advance from the rude methods of the time, and had, m 
fact, invented a new and hitherto unknown art. 

All this took place at Strasburg, where Gutenberg re- 
sided many years ; but it did not lead to any practical re- 
sult, and the^r^^ book was printed at Mentz, near which 
the inventor was born. Thither Gutenberg returned 
about the year 1450, with all his materials. His former 
partnership had expired, and at Mentz he associated him- 
self with John Fust, a wealthy goldsmith and citizen, 
who, upon agreement of being taught the secrets of the 
art, and admitted into the participation of the profits, ad- 
vanced the necessary funds, 2020 florins. The new part- 
nership then hired a house called Zum Jungen, and took 
into their employ Peter Schoefler and others. A lawsuit 
arose between the partners in 1455 ; and from a docu- 
ment in existence we learn that, having expended the 
whole of his considerable private fortune in his experi- 
ments, Gutenberg had mortgaged his printing materials 
to Fust, which is proved by the initial letters used by 

* "Printing," by T. C. Hansard, Esq. {Encychpcedia Btitannica, 
eighth edition, 1859), in which the history and practice of the art arc 
lucidly traced. 



STATUE OF GUTENBERG. 33 

Gutenberg and his partners in printing works between 
1450 and 1455, being likewise used by Fust and SchoefFer 
in the Psalter of 1457 and 1459. Gutenberg did not, 
however, abandon the unprofitable pursuit, but, starting 
anew at Mentz, carried on the business for ten years ; 
but in 1465, on becoming one of the band of gentlemen 
pensioners of the Elector Adolphus of Nassau, " he final- 
ly abandoned the pursuit of an art, which, though it 
caused him infinite trouble and vexation, has been more 
efiectual in preserving his name and the memory of his 
acts than all the waiTike deeds and great achievements 
of his renowned master and all his house" {Hansard), 
Gutenberg died on the 24th day of February, 1468. His 
printing-office and materials were eventually sold to Nich- 
olas Bechtermunze, of Elfield, whose works are greatly 
sought after by the curious, as they afibrd much proof, 
by collation, of the genuineness of the works attributed 
to his great predecessor. 

Gutenberg appears to have had a troubled life. When 
young, he became implicated in an insurrection at Mentz, 
and was compelled to fly to Strasburg; there necessity 
compelled him to employ himself in niechanical pursuits, 
when he made his great discovery. On his return to 
Mentz, when in partnership with Fust, and Schoeffer his 
son-in-law, he experienced the hard fate that all great in- 
ventors have to endure from the misconceptions and in- 
gratitude of mankind. The Guild of Writers and the 
priests persecuted him, and even his partners joined with 
his enemies against him ; and only his last few years were 
passed in peace. Posterity has endeavored, in some de- 
gree, to make amends for the ingratitude of the discov- 
erer's contemporaries. In 1837, a statue of Gutenberg, 
by Thorwaldsen, was erected at Mentz, and inaugurated 
with great ceremony ; and at high mass, in the fine old 
Cathedral, was displayed the first Bible printed by Gu- 
tenberg. The statue was erected by a general sub- 
scription, to which all Europe was invited to contribute. 
One who witnessed the ceremony writes, with honest 
indignation, " England literally gave nothing toward the 
statue of a man who has done as much as any other sin- 
gle cause to make England what she is."* The Guten- 

* Charles Knight, in The Old Printer and Modern Press, 1854. 

B2 



34 



TYPE-CASTING. 



berg Society, to which all the writers of the Rhenish 
provinces belong, hold a yearly meeting also in Mentz, to 
honor the memory of the first printer, and to celebrate 
his discovery. 

It is hard to apportion the share of honor to which 
each of the partners — Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer — 
is entitled in advancing their art. Gutenberg Avould 
readily suggest a new and expeditious method of manu- 
facturing types ; the practical skill of Fust as a worker 




Casting the T}T)e. 

in metals, and his large pecuniary resources, would read- 
ily provide the necessary appliances ; and the entire con- 
ception and execution of the casting of type is given to 
Schoeffer. The only evidence shows that the partners 
had for some time taken casts of types in moulds of plas- 
ter ; for the types of Gutenberg's earlier efforts, both at 
Strasburg and at Mentz, were cut out of single pieces of 
wood or metal with infinite labor and imperfection. 
Schoeffer has therefore (Mr. Hansard allows) an undoubt- 



CAXTON BRINGS PRINTING INTO ENGLAND. 35 

ed claim to be considered as one of the three inventors 
of printing ; for he it was who first suggested the cut- 
ting of punches, whereby beautiful form could be stamp- 
ed upon the matrix, and the highest sharpness and finish 
given to the face. Lambinet, who thinks " the essence 
of the art of printing is in the engraved punch," natu- 
rally gives the chief credit to Schoefier ; this is not the 
generally-received opinion ; but he is entitled to a place 
on the right hand of Gutenberg. It should be noted 
that there is no book knov\^n which bears the conjoint 
names of Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoefier, nor any which 
has the imprint of Gutenberg alone ; but there are sev- 
eral books which, from internal evidence, are unanimous- 
ly attributed by the literati of all parties and opinions to 
Gutenberg's press. 

It is curious to observe that War was the means of 
quickening the growth and extension of Printing. In 
1462, the storming of Mentz dispersed the workmen, 
and gave the secret to the world. In 1465 it appeared 
in Italy;* in 1469, in France; in 1474, Caxton brought 
it to England ; and in 1477 it was introduced into Spain. 

It is generally believed that William Caxton was born 
in the Weald of Kent; about 1412, he was put appren- 
tice to a mercer or merchant of London, became a trav- 
eling agent or factor in the Low Countries, and there 
bought manuscripts and books, with other merchandise. 
He there also learned the new art of Printing ; and, se- 
curing one of Fust and Schoeffer's fugitive workmen from 
Mentz, he established a printing-oflice at Cologne, and 
there printed the French original and his own translation 
of the Recuyell of the History es of 'Troy, He afterward 
transferred his materials to England, and brought over 
with him Wynkyn de Worde, who probably was the 
first superintendent of Caxton's printing establishment. 

* Near Subiaco, forty-four miles from Rome, on a hill above the 
river, may be traced the ruins of Nero's villa. It was in this villa, as 
we are told by Tacitus and Philostratus, that the cup of the tyrant 
was struck by lightninpj while he was in the act of drinkinc:, and the 
table overthrown by the shock. In propinquity, which almost sug- 
gests a parallel, is the monastery of Santa Scolastica, the first place in 
Italy in which the printing-press was set up by the German printers, 
Swcynheim and Panartz : a copy of their edition of Lactantius, their 
first production, dated 14G5, is still preserved in the monastery. 



36 FIRST PRINTIl^G IN ENGLAND. 

He set up his first press at Westminster, perhaps in one 
of the chapels attached to the Abbey, and certainly un- 
•der the protection of the abbot f and he there produced 
the first book pointed in England^ The Game of Chesse, 
completed on the last day of March, 1474. His " capital 
work" was a Book of the Nolle History es of Kyng 
Arthur in 1485, the most beautiful production of his 
press. He died in 1491, being about fourscore years of 
age: his industry and devotedness is recorded in the 
fact that he finished his translation of the Vitae Patrum^ 
from French into English, on the last day of his life, 

Caxton was buried in the old church of St. Margaret, 
built in the reign of Edward I., and of which few traces 
remain. The parish books contain an entry of the ex- 
pense "for iiij torches" and "the belle" at the old print- 
er's " bureying ;" and the same books record the church- 
wardens' selling for 6^. 8^?. one of the books bequeathed 
to the church by Caxton ! In the chancel a tablet to his 
memory was raised in 1820 by the Roxburghe Club. 

* But a veiy curious placard, in Caxton's largest type, and now 
preserved in the libraiy of Brazen-nose College, Oxford, shows that 
he printed in the Almonry ; for in this placard he invites customers 
to * ' come to Westmonester in to the Almonestrye at the Reed Pale, " 
the name by which was known a house in which Caxton is said to 
have lived. It stood on the north side of the Almonry, with its back 
against that of a house on the south side of Tothill Street. Bagford 
describes this house as of brick, with the sign of the King's Head : it 
is stated to have fallen down in November, 1845, before the removal 
of the other dwellings in the Almonry, to form a new line (Victoria 
Street) from Broad Sanctuary to Pimlico. A beam of wood was 
saved from the materials of the house, and from it tave been made a 
chessboard and two sets of chessmen, as appropriate memorials of 
Caxton's first labor in England — The Game and Plaije of the Chesse. 
According to a view of Caxton's house, engraved by G. Cooke in 
1827, it was three-storied, and had a gallery or balcony to the upper 
floor, with a window in its bold gable. — ( Curiosities of London.) The 
site of Caxton's house is now included in the Westminster Hotel Com- 
pany's premises. 

Note. — The presses of Seth Adams & Co., of Boston, are the best 
now made for book-printing. For this purpose they are in general 
use throughout the United States, and are found, under proper man- 
agement, to give clear impressions of the finest wood-cuts. Harper's 
Magazine, the excellence of whose typographical execution is thought 
remarkable, not only here, but in Europe, is printed from Adams 
presses, more than forty of which arc constantly in operation in the 
Harper Printing Establishment. 



THE FIRST PRINTING-PRESS. 39 

This tablet (a chaste work by Westmacott) was origm- 
ally mtended to have been placed in Westminster Ab- 
bey ; but the fees for its erection were so great, that ap- 
plication was made to the churchwardens of St. Marga- 
ret's, who, as a mark of respect to their parishioner's 
memory, allowed it to be placed in the church without 
any of the customary fees. It was proposed, several 
years since, to erect at Westminster a memorial statue 
of Caxton, but the fund raised for that purpose now en- 
larges the Printers' Pension Society's sphere of benevo- 
lence. 

We must say a few words as to the first Presses. Gu- 
tenberg is thought to have felt the want of a machine of 
sufficient power to take the impressions of the types or 
blocks which he employed ; nor is it supposed that, with 
cutting type, forming screws, making and inventing ink, 
he could have had time to construct a press, even had he 
possessed the requisite mechanical skill. His junction 
with Fust and Schoeffer is thought to have supplied the 
defect. 

The earliest form of printing-press very closely resem- 
bled the common screw-press, as the cheese or napkin 
press, with some contrivance for running the form of type, 
when inked, under the pressure (obtained from the screw 
by means of a lever inserted into the spindle), and back 
again when the pressure is made. The presses used in 
the office of Fust and Schoeffer are believed to have dif- 
fered in no essential form from the above, until improved 
in the details by Blew, a printer of Amsterdam, in 1620. 
Other improvements were from time to time introduced, 
but they were all superseded about the commencement 
of the present century, when the old wooden press gave 
way to Earl Stanhope's invention of the iron press which 
bears his name. Its novelty consisted in an improved 
application of the power to the spindle and screw, where- 
by it was greatly increased. Lord Stanhope also made 
some improvements in the process of stereotyping, and 
in the construction of locks for canals ; he invented an 
ingenious machine for performing arithmetical opera- 
tions ; during great part of his life he studied the action 
of the electric fluid; and in lYYO he made public his 
theory of what is called " the returning stroke of light- 



40 



THE PRINTING-MACHIXE. 



ning." Lord Stanhope bequeathed £500 to the Royal 
Society, of wliieh he had been a fellow fifty-one years. 




The Hand Press. 



The principle of the^tanhope press has been followed 
out by several subsequent inventors, and improvements 
of mechanical detail introduced, tending to the economy 
of time and labor, and to precision of workmanship. The 
printing-press, however, proved inadequate to a rate of 
production equal to the demand; and as early as 1790, 
even before the Stanhope press was generally known, Mr. 
W. Nicholson patented a printing-machine, of which 
the chief points were the following: "The type, being 
rubbed or scraped narrower toward the bottom, was to 
be fixed upon a cyUnder, in order, as it were, to radiate 
from the centre of it. This cyUnder, with its type, was 



THE PRINTING-MACHINE. 41 

to revolve in gear with another cylinder covered with 
soft leather (the impression cylinder), and the type re- 
ceived its ink from another cylinder, to which the inking 
apparatus was appUed. The paper was impressed by 




The EoUer. 

passing between the type and impression cylinders." 
{Hansard) Such was the first printing-machine : it was 
never brought into use, although most of Nicholson's 
plans were, when modified, adopted by after-constructors. 

Konig, a German, conceived nearly the same idea ; and 
meeting with the encouragement in England which he 
failed to receive on the Continent, constructed a print- 
ing-machine for Mr. Walter; and on the 28th of Novem- 
ber, 1814, the readers of the Times were informed that 
they were then, for the first time, reading a newspaper 
printed by machinery driven by steam-power, and work- 
ing at the rate of 1100 impressions per hour. In this 
machine the ordinary type was used, and laid upon a 
flat surface, the impression being given by the form pass- 
ing under a cylinder of great size. This machine was, 
however, very complicated, and was soon superseded by 
that of Messrs. Applegath and Cowper, the novel fea- 
tures of which were, accuracy in the register (that is, one 
page falling precisely upon the back of the other), the 
method of inking the types, and the simplification of very 
complicated parts ; and this machine, with numerous 
modifications by different makers, is now in general use, 
so that the foremost improver of the printing-machine is 
Augustus Applegath. The simplicity of the operation 
is admirable: the whole machine is put in motion by 
means of a strap, which passes over a wheel under the 
frame, and is mostly worked by steam, it requiring only 
two boys, one to lay on, and the other to take off* the 
sheets. 

The next great improvement was the construction of 



42 



THE PRINTING-MACHINE. 



the vertical machine by Mr. Applegath, in which he 
abandoned the reciprocating motion (occasioning a great 
waste of motive power), and instead of placing the type 
on a plane table, placed it on a cylinder of large dimen- 
sions, which revolves on a vertical axis, with a continuous 
rotatory motion. " No description," says Mr. Hansard, 
" can give any adequate idea of the scene presented by 
one of these machines in full Avork — the maze of wheels 
and rollers, the intricate lines of swift-moving tapes, the 
flight of sheets, and the din of machinery. The central 
drum moves at the rate of six feet per second, or one 
revolution in three seconds; the impression cylinders 
make five revolutions in the same time. The layer-on 
delivers two sheets every five seconds, consequently six- 
teen sheets are printed in that brief space. The diameter 
of an eight-feeder, including the galleries for the layers- 
on, is twenty-five feet. The Times employs two of these 
eight-cylinder machines, each of which averages 12,000 
impressions per hour; and one nine-cylinder, which 
prints 16,000." Messrs. Hoe, of New York, have con- 
structed machines differing from Applegath's Vertical 
chiefly in the drum and impression cylinders being hori- 
zontal : one of these machines has been constructed with 
ten cylinders for workmg the Times at 20,000 impres- 
sions per hour. Another American machine has been 
constructed to work 22,000 double impressions per hour. 
" Could Gutenberg, if he were to rise from the dead, 
imagine that at the present day there would be more 
than 4000 presses in Europe, each house being designated 
by its press ; and of these, 600 in the city of London 
alone — and 1000 printing-machines in England, supply- 
ing the printing requirements, on such a scale as this, for 
her populations !" — Lecture delivered at the Royal histi- 
tution^ by Mr. Henry Bradbury^ 1858. 




w^mmMimmm, 



The (Jouipof^ing-rftick.. 



WHO INVENTED GUNPOWDEE? 

" From the earliest dawnings of policy to this day," 
says Burke, " the invention of men has been sharpening 
and improving the mystery of murder, from the first 
rude essay of clubs and stones to the present perfection 
of gunnery, cannoneering, bombarding, mining." The 
imputed universality of the class of invention may ac- 
count for the difficulty of tracing the special practice of 
it in the composition of Gunpowder with certainty to 
any period or nation. **rhe evidence is conflicting, and 
it ranges from several centuries before the commence- 
ment of our era to the claim of the German monk of the 
fourteenth century, of whom a commemorative statue 
was erected so lately as the year 1853. 

The earliest account extant on the subject of Gun- 
powder exists in a code of Gentoo laws, where it is men- 
tioned as applied to fire-arms ; this document, being of 
some fifteen centuries before Christ, is thought by many 
to have been coeval with the time of Moses ! The notice 
occurs in the Sanscrit preface, translated by Halhed, and 
is as follows : '' The magistrate shall not make Avar with 
any deceitful machine, nor with poisoned weapons, nor 
with cannon and guns, nor any kind of fire-arms." Hal- 
hed observes : " The reader, no doubt, will wonder to 
find a prohibition of fire-arms in records of such remote 
antiquity; and he will probably hence renew the sus- 
picion which has long been deemed absurd, that Alex- 
ander the Great did absolutely meet with some weapons 
of this kind in India, as a passage in Quintus Curtius 
seems to ascertain. Gunpowder has been known in 
China as well as in Hindostan far beyond all periods of 
investigation. The word ' fire-arms' is literally translated 
by the Sanscrit agnee-aster {agny astro) ^ a weapon of 
fire. In their earliest form they are described to have 
been a kind of dart tipped with fire, and discharged by 
some sort of explosive compound from a bamboo. 
Among several extraordinary properties of this Aveapon, 



44 GUl^OWDER IN CHINA. 

one was, that, after it had taken its flight, it divided into 
several separate streams of flame, each of which took 
effect, and which, when once kindled, could not be ex- 
tinguished ; but this kind of agnee-aster is now lost." 

Dutens has selected many passages from Greek and 
Latin authors favorable to the opinion that Gunpowder 
was known to the ancients. He mentions the attempt 
of Salmoneus to imitate thunder, and of the Brahmins to 
do the same thing; but his most remarkable quotation 
is from the life of Apollonius of Tyana, written by Philos- 
tratus, showing that Alexander was prevented from ex- 
tending his conquests in India because of the use of 
Gunpowder by a people called Oxydracse, who repulsed 
the enemy " with storms of lightning and thunder-bolts, 
Imrled upon them from above."* Philostratus is not re- 
markable for veracity ; but taking into consideration the 
records of Oriental history, and the fact of pyrotechny 
having been cultivated from time immemorial in India 
and China, his assertion does not seem imjDrobable. In 
India and many other parts of Asia, nitre occurs in great 
quantity, spread over the surface of the earth. Dr. 
Scoffern, the experienced writer on this subject, supposes 
a fire lighted on such a spot : the most careless observer 
must have noticed the effect of the saltpetre in augment- 
ing the flame ; if then, attention ha\dng been directed to 
this phenomenon, charcoal and saltpetre had been mixed 
together purposely. Gunpowder would have been form- 
ed. The third ingj^edient, sulphur, is not absolutely 
necessary; indeed, very good Gunpowder, chemically 
speaking, can be made without it. Sulphur tends to in- 
crease the plasticity of the mass, and better enables it to 
be made into and to retain the form of grains. 

It has been said that Gunpowder was used in China as 
early as the year a.d. 85. Sir George Staunton observes 
that " the knowledge of Gunpowder in China and India 
seemed coeval with the most distant historic events. 
Among the Chinese it has at all times been applied to 
useful purposes, as blasting rocks, etc., and in the making 
of fire-works ; although it has not been directed through 
strong metallic tubes, as the Europeans did soon after 
they had discovered it." In short, there can be no doubt 
tliat a sort of Gunpowder was at an early period used in 



GUNPOWDER IN EUROPE. 45 

China, and in other parts of Asia ; and Barrow's state- 
ment that the Chinese soldiery make their Gunpowder, 
and every soldier prepares his own, is highly character- 
istic of the people. Against the claim of the Chinese to 
the invention, it is urged that the silence of Marco Polo 
respecting Gunpowder may be considered as at least a 
negative proof that it was unknown to the Chinese in 
the time of Kublai Khan. 

There is nothing in the history of these people, nor in 
their " Dictionary of Arts and Sciences," that bears any 
allusion to their knowledge of cannon before the invasion 
of Ghengis Khan, when (in the year 1219) mention is 
made oiho-pao^ or fire-tubes, the name of cannon, which 
are said to have killed men, and to set fire to inflamma- 
ble substances ; they are said, too, to have been used by 
the Tartars, not by the Chinese, and were probably noth- 
ing more than the enormous rockets known in India at 
the time of the Mohammedan invasion ( Quarterly He- 
m6^^, No. 41). 

Numerous documents, however, show that Gunpow- 
der was known in the East at periods of great antiquity, 
whence it might have been introduced into Europe, 
either through the medium of the Byzantine Greeks, or 
by the Saracens into Spain. In a paper read about fifty- 
five years since before the French Institute, M. Langles 
maintained that the use of Gunpowder was conveyed to 
us by the Crusaders, who are stated to have employed it 
at the siege of Mecca in 690 : he contended that they had 
derived it from the Indians. 

Mr. Hallam considers it nearly certain that Gunpow- 
der was brought by the Saracens into Europe. Its use 
in engines of war, though they may seem to have been 
rather like our fire-works than artillery, is mentioned by 
an Arabic writer in the Escurial collection about the 
year 1249. The words which are thought to mean gun- 
powder are translated pulvis nitratus. The Moors or 
Arabs, in Spain, appear to have used gunpowder and 
cannon as early as 1312 ; and in 1331, when the King of 
Granada laid siege to Alicant, he battered its walls with 
iron bullets, discharged by fire from machines; which 
novel mode of warfare (says the chronicle) inspired great 
terror. And when Alonzo XI., King of (Jastile, besieged 



46 GUNPOWDER IN UCKOPE. 

Algesiras in 1342-3, the Moorish garrison, in defending 
the place, employed tnienos (literally thunders)^ which a 
passage in the chronicle proves to have been a species of 
cannon fired with powder. And Petrarch, in a passage 
written before 1344, and quoted by Muratori, speaks of 
the art of making Gunpowder as nuper rara^ nunc coni- 
7nunis (recently rare, now common). 

Another authority traces Gunpowder to the Arabs, 
but at an earlier date than hitherto mentioned, and at 
the same time seeks to identify it with an invention of 
much earlier antiquity. The celebrated Oriental scholar, 
M. Reinaud, has discovered an Arabic MS. of the thir- 
teenth century, which proves that compositions identical 
with Gunpowder in all but the granulations were, and 
had been for a long time previously, in the possession of 
the Arabs ; and that there is every probability they had 
obtained them from the Chinese in the ninth century. 
Many of these were called " Gi^ek fire ;" and comparing 
the account of Joinville, of the wars on the Nile in the 
time of St. Louis, with the Arabic recipes, there can be 
little doubt we are now in possession of what was then 
termed " Greek fire." Mr. Grove, F.R.S., who has inves- 
tigated the subject experimentally as well as historically, 
concludes that the main element of Greek fire, as contra- 
distinguished from other inflammable substances, was 
nitre, or a salt containing much oxygen ; that Greek fire 
and Gunpowder were substantially the same thing ; and 
that the development of the invention had been very slow 
and gradual, and had taken place long antecedent to the 
date of Schwartz, the monk of Cologne, a.d. 1320, to 
whom the invention of Gunpowder is generally attribu- 
ted ; thus adding to the innumerable, if not unexception- 
able cases in which discoveries commonly attributed to ac- 
cident, and to a single mind, are found, upon investiga- 
tion, to have been progressive, and the result of the con- 
tinually-improving knowledge of successive generations. 

It was long the custom to attribute the invention of 
Gunpowder to our philosopher, Roger Bacon ; but a pas- 
sage in his Opus Majus^ written in 1267, proves that in- 
stead of claiming the merit of the discovery, he mentions 
Gunpowder as a substance well known in his time, and 
even employed by the makers of fire-works ; and he mi- 



GUNPOWDER IN ENGLAND. 47 

nutely describes a common cracker. In his treatise De 
Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturm^ he says, that from 
" saltpetre and other ingredients we are able to make a 
fire that shall burn at any distance." In another passage 
he indicates two ingredients, saltpetre and sulphm*, and 
" Lura nope cum ubre," which is a transposition of the 
words "carbonum pulvere" (charcoal in powder). At 
the period when Bacon lived, Spain was the favorite seat 
of literature and art. Bacon is known to have traveled 
through Spain, and to have been conversant with Arabic, 
so that he might have seen the manuscript in the Escurial 
collection, which is at least as probable a supposition as 
that he saw the treatise of Marcus Grsecus. Some fifty 
years later, 1320, is the date claimed by the Germans for 
the invention due to their monk, Bartholdus Schwartz, in 
whose honor a stone statue has been erected in the town 
of Freiburg, where he was born ; and in reply to earlier 
claims to the invention, it is maintained that to Schwartz 
is due the merit, because he did not learn the secret from 
any one else. 

Nearly two hundred years before this date, Humboldt 
states that a species of Gunpowder was used to blast the 
rock in the Rammelsberg, in the Hartz Mountains. 

Authorized statements negative the assertion by Cam- 
den, Kennett, and other writers, that no Gunpowder was 
manufactured in England until the reign of Elizabeth. 
Its first application to the firing of artillery has been 
commonly ascribed to the English at the battle of Cres- 
sy, in August, 1346; but hitherto the fact has depended 
almost solely on the evidence of a single Italian writer, 
and the word " gunners" having been met with in some 
public accounts of the reign of Edward III. The Rev. 
Joseph Hunter has, however, from records of the period, 
shown the names of the persons employed in the manu- 
facture of Gunpowder (out of saltpetre and " quick sul- 
phur," without any mention of charcoal), with the quan- 
tities supplied to the king just previously to his expedi- 
tion to France in June or July, 1346. In the records it 
is termed pw^i;z5 jt9ro ingeniis ; and they estabhsh that a 
considerable weight had been supplied to the English 
army subsequently to its landing at La Hogue, and pre- 
viously to the battle of Cressy ; and that before Edward 



48 GUNPOWDER FIRST MADE IN ENGLAND. 

III. engaged in the skge of Calais, he issued an order to 
the proper officers in England, requiring them to pur- 
chase as much saltpetre and sulphur as they could pro- 
cure. Sharon Turner, in his History of Migland^ has 
also shown, from an order of Richard III. in the Harleian 
MSS., that Gunpowder was made in England in 1483 ; 
and Mr. Eccleston {English Antiquities) states that the 
EngUsh both made and exported it as early as 1411. 
Nevertheless, Gunpowder long remained a costly article ; 
and even in the reign of Charles I., on accoimt of its dear- 
ness, " the trained bands are much discouraged in then* 
exercising." In 1686, it appears from the Clarendon 
Corresponde7ice that the wholesale price ranged from 
about £2 105. to £3 a barrel. 

John Evelyn, of Wotton, Surrey, asserts that his an- 
cestors were the first who manufactured Gunpowder in 
England ; but this must be regarded as the reintroduc- 
tion. His grandfather transferred the patent to Sir John 
Evelyn's grandfather, of Godstone, in whose family it 
continued till the Civil Wars. As we stroll along the 
valley in which lies Wotton Place, we are reminded that 
upon the rivulet which winds through this peaceful re- 
gion was once made the " warlike contrivance." Evelyn, 
in a letter to John Aubrey, dated February 8, 1675, says 
that on this stream, near his house, formerly stood many 
powder-mills, erected by his ancestors, who were the very 
first that brought that invention into England ; before 
wliich we had all our powder from Flanders. He also 
describes the blowing-up of one of these mills, when a 
beam, fifteen inches in diameter, at Wotton Place, was 
broken ; and on the blowing-up of another mill lower 
down, toward Sheire, there was shot through a cottage 
a piece of timber, " which took ofi" a poor woman's head 
as she was spinning." 

TJie Manufacture of Gunpowder may be described from a visit by 
Dr. Scoffcni to one of her majesty's mills at Waltham, in the Essex 
Marshes. First, as to the ingredients. The saltpetre (principally im- 
p(5rted from Bengal) is boiled in large pans, evaporated, and crystal- 
lized ; and the charcoal is prepared from the alder and willow, which 
abound in the neighborhood. These processes are conducted in build- 
ings at some distance from the Gunpowder Mills, whither the materi- 
als are carried, by water, in covered boats, to the works. There the 
salti)etre, brimstone, and charcoal are ground separately in mills, each 
tousisting of a jiair of heavy circular stones slowly revolving on a 



MANUFACTURE OF GUNPOWDER. 49 

stone bed. Next the ingredients are conveyed to * ^ the Mixing House, " 
where visitors wear over-shoes. Here, in bins, are the saltpetre, brim- 
stone, and charcoal, weighed in the exact proportions : saltpetre 75, 
brimstone 10, and charcoal 15, in every 100 parts. Of the three in- 
gredients, 42 lbs. are placed in a hollow drum, which revolves rapidly, 
and contains a fly-pan, which rotates in an opposite direction; in 
about five minutes a complete mixture is effected, and the charge is 
received in a bag tied over the lower orifice of the drum. 

The *^ composition" is next taken to *'the Incorporating Mills, " and 
is now a combustible compound, to obtain its explosive power by the 
ingredients being thoroughly incorporated. The mill consists of a 
pair of circular stones (" runners"), weighing about 3i tons each, and 
slowly rolling over the powder, which is placed on the stone bed of 
the mill, surrounded by a huge wooden basin. The powder is pre- 
viously damped, as it could not be safely ground dry ; about 7 pints of 
water (^* liquor") being added to the charge of 42 lbs. of powder dur- 
ing 3i hours, the time of grinding. To insure this with precision, 
and to obviate the chance of any irregularity in a clock, the water- 
wheel which works two of these mills in one house also marks its rev- 
olutions on a dial, so that the attendant can never be mistaken in the 
time the charge has been "on" — a most important point, where the 
over-grinding of the too dry powder might cause it to explode. 
Sometimes a portion of the wood-work of the roof, or mill, becoming 
detached — such as a cog of the wheel — and falling into the pan, acts 
as a skid on one of the runners, and by friction produces heat enough 
to cause a mass of powder to explode. As a protection, over each 
house containing a pair of mills is suspended a flat board, which, in 
case of an explosion, is first blown upward, and, being connected by 
wires with a cistern of water over the pan of the fellow mill, upsets 
the same, and drowns the Gunpowder. The attendants . are as little 
as possible in these mills, and only work by daylight. 

More hazardous processes, however, follow. The powder thus in- 
corporated is in hard, flat lumps, and has again to be reduced to dust 
in the *' Breaking-down House," by conveying it down an inclined 
plane, through rollers, which crush nearly 500 lbs. in the hour. The 
powder is then taken to *'the Press House," and there, between gun- 
metal plates, is pressed in thin cakes to one third its bulk by a power 
of 700 tons in a hydraulic press. The cakes are roughly broken up, 
and sent in baskets to '*the Granulating Mill," where the powder is 
again broken down into grains, the size being regulated by sieves. 
The floor is covered witli hides fastened down with copper nails, and 
the mill can be started or stopped by a rope passing through the wall, 
which is bomb-proof. The powder is then dried, by heat, in "the 
Stoving-room,'^ which is flanked externally by "traversers" (mounds 
of earth 30 feet thick), to confine explosion, should it happen, as 
much as possible to one house. Lastly, the powder is sifted in "the 
Dusting House," where the sieves revolve with great velocity; the 
dust escapes through the meshes, and the Gunpowder is drawn off 
through a sort of tap, into barrels, for packing. The finest powder 
is " glazed" by black-lead being shaken up with it ; but cannon pow- 
der has not this finish. 

c 



THE BAKOMETEE: TOEEICELLI AND 
PASCAL. 

The invention of the Barometer is one of the most 
curious events in the history of philosophy. No new 
discovery, not even those substantiated by the telescope, 
ever knocked so hard at the door of a received system, 
or in a manner which so imperiously demanded admis- 
sion. The circumstances attending it are briefly these : 

The phenomena of the common Pump had been well 
known for more than a century at least before the Chris- 
tian era. The mode of explanation was simply the well- 
known maxim that " Nature abhors a vacuum ;" but no 
attempt had been made to discover why. Sir John 
Herschel observes, that "if any such abhorrence existed, 
and had the force of an acting cause which could urge 
water a single foot into a pipe, there is no reason why 
the same principle should not carry it up two, three, or 
any number of feet ; none why it should suddenly stop 
at a certain height, and refuse to rise higher, however 
violent the suction might be — nay, even fall back, if pur- 
posely forced up too high." 

It is related that the engineers of Cosmo de Medicis, 
wishing to raise water higher than thirty-two feet by 
means of a sucking-pump, they found it impossible to 
take it higher than thirty-one feet. Galileo, the Italian 
sage, was applied to in vain for a solution of the difli- 
culty. It had been the belief of all ages that the water 
followed the piston from the horror which nature had 
of a vacuum ; and Galileo improved the dogma* by tell- 
ing the engineers that this horror was not felt, or at 
least not shown, beyond heights of thirty-one feet ! At 

* The above story is told in several different ways (it has been said, 
for instance, that the answer of Galileo was ironical) ; but, whichever 
may be true, it is most probable that it led him to abandon the theory 
of nature's horror, thouj^h without substituting any other. It has 
been thought that, before his death, Galileo suspected the true ex- 
planation. 



PASCAL AND THE BABOMETEE. 51 

his desire, however, his disciple, Torricelli, investigated 
the subject. He found that when the fluid raised was 
mercury, the horror of a vacuum did not extend beyond 
thirty inches, because the mercury would not rise to a 
greater height ; and hence he concluded that a column 
of water thirty-one feet high, and one of mercury thirty 
inches, exerted the same pressure upon the same base, 
and that the antagonistic force which counterbalanced 
them must in both cases be the same ; and having learn- 
ed from Galileo that the air was a heavy fluid, he con- 
cluded, and published the conclusion in 1645, that the 
weight of the air was the cause of the rise of water to 
thirty-one feet, and of mercury to thirty inches. He 
then filled a tube, more than three feet long, and open at 
one end only, with mercury; and then, stopping the 
open end with the finger, he placed the tube in an open 
vessel of mercury, with the open end downward. On 
removing the finger, the mercury in the tube sank until 
it stood in the tube at about twenty-eight inches higher 
than the mercury in the vessel. He thus constructed 
what is at this time considered the best form of the ba- 
rometer. 

In 1646, Pascal, the young philosopher of Clermont, 
repeated these experiments at Rouen, before more than 
500 persons, among whom were five or six Jesuits of the 
college, and he obtained precisely the same results as 
Torricelli, with whose explanation, however, he did not 
become acquainted until the following year, when, assum- 
ing that the mercury in the Torricellian tube was sus- 
pended by the weight or pressure of the air, he sug- 
gested that it would necessarily fall in ascending a high 
mountain, by the diminution of the superincumbent col- 
umn of air. At his request, his relative, M. Perier, tried 
the barometer at the summit and the base of the mount- 
ain of Puy de Dome, in Auvergne ; the result was, that 
the mercury, which, at the base, stood twenty-six and a 
quarter inches (French), was only twenty-three and a 
sixth inches at the summit. Pascal afterward found the 
same result sensibly shown in the ascent of a church 
tower and of a private house. 

After this important experiment was made, Pascal in- 
timated that different states of the weather would occa- 



52 YOUTH OF PASCAL. 

sion differences in the barometer, according as it was cold, 
hot, dry, or moist ; and M. Perier tested this opinion by- 
observations made at Clermont from 1649 to 1651. Cor- 
responding observations were made at the same time at 
Paris and at Stockholm ; and from these it appeared that 
the mercury rises in cold, cloudy, and damp weather, and 
falls when the weather is hot and dry, and during rain 
and snow ; but still with such irregularities, that no gen- 
eral rule could be established. At Clermont, the differ- 
ence between the highest and lowest state of the mer- 
cury was one inch three and a half lines ; at Paris, the 
same ; and at Stockholm, two mches two and a quarter 
lines. 

The discovery was, however, at first much miscon- 
ceived, and even disputed, till the question was finally 
decided by an appeal to a crucial instance ; one of the 
first, if not the very first, on record in physics. " It was 
then seen," says Sir John Herschel, "as by a glaring 
instance^ that the maintenance of the mercury in the 
tube was the effect of a perfectly definite external cause, 
while its fluctuations from day to day, with the" varying 
state of the atmosphere, strongly corroborated the notion 
of its being due to the pressure of the external ak on the 
surface of the mercury in the reservoir." 

The truth of the thing is just this : air, though com- 
paratively light, is positively heavy, having a Aveight of 
its own. The above experiments showed that a square 
inch of it, carried up from the surface of the earth to the 
top of the atmosphere, is no less than fifteen pounds in 
weight. It is this weight of the atmosphere, fifteen 
pounds on every square inch, that pushes water into the 
void left by the up-drawn piston of a pump ; and there 
is, of course, a limit beyond which it can not push the 
water, namely, the point of height at which the column 
of water in the pump-tube is exactly balanced by the 
weight of the atmosphere. It is just a question of bal- 
ance : fifteen pounds can only support fifteen pounds — a 
thing which every body now understands, thanks to Ga- 
lileo, Torricelli, and Blaise Pascal, the seer, the discover- 
er, and verifier of the fact. 

Pascal evinced such early sagacity, that, at the age of 
eleven, he was ambitious of teaching as well as learning ; 



PASCAL WEIGHS THE ATMOSPHERE. 53 

and he then composed a little treatise on the refractions 
of sounds of vibrating bodies when touched by the finger. 
One day he was found alone in his chamber tracing with 
charcoal geometrical figures on the wall ; and on another 
occasion he was surprised by his father just when he had 
succeeded in obtaining a demonstration of the 32d prop- 
osition of the first book of Euclid — that the three angles 
of a triangle are equal to two right angles. Astonished 
and overjoyed, his father rushed to his friend, M. Rail- 
leur, to announce the extraordinary fact ; and the young 
geometer was instantly permitted to study, unrestrained, 
the Elements of Euclid, of which he soon made himself 
master without any extrinsic aid. From the geometry 
of planes and solids he passed to the higher branches of 
the science; and before he was sixteen years of age he 
composed a treatise on the Conic Sections, which evinced 
the most extraordinary sagacity. When scarcely nine- 
teen years of age, too, Pascal contrived a machine to as- 
sist his father in making the numerical calculations which 
his official duties in Upper Normandy required. 

In later life, Pascal found researches in geometry an 
occupation well fitted to give serenity to a heart bleed- 
ing from the wounds of his beloved associates. He had 
for some time renounced the study of the sciences, when, 
during a violent attack of toothache, which deprived him 
of sleep, the subject of the cycloid forced itself upon his 
thoughts. Fermal, Roberval, and others, had trodden 
the same ground before him ; but in less than eight 
days, and under severe suifering, he discovered a gen- 
eral method of solving this class of problems by the sum- 
mation of certain series ; and as there was only one step 
from this discovery to that of Fluxions, Pascal might, 
with more leisure and better health, have won from New- 
ton and from Leibnitz the glory of that great invention. 

Pascal's treatise on the weight of the whole mass of 
air forms the basis of the modern science of Pneumatics. 
In order to prove that the mass of air presses by its 
weight on all the bodies which it surrounds, and also that 
it is elastic and compressible, Pascal carried a balloon 
half filled with air to the top of the Puy de Dome. It 
gradually inflated itself as it ascended ; and when it 
reached the summit it was quite full and swollen, as if 



54 PASCAL WEIGHS THE ATMOSPHERE. 

fresh air had been blown into it, or, what is the same 
thing, it swelled in proportion as the weight of the col- 
umn of air which pressed upon it was diminished. When 
again brought down, it became more and more flaccid ; 
and when it reached the bottom, it resumed its original 
condition. In the above treatise, Pascal shows that all 
the phenomena and effects hitherto ascribed to the hor- 
ror of a vacuum arise from the weight of a mass of air ; 
and — after explaining the variable pressure of the atmos- 
phere in different localities and in its different states, and 
the rise of water in pumps — he calculates that the whole 
mass of air round our globe weighs 8,983,889,440,000,- 
000,000 French pounds. 

Seeing that little more than two centuries have elapsed 
since the exposition of this great principle of Hydrostat- 
ics was clearly established, we are not surprised to find 
that the science in the Dark Ages enabled the ancient 
magicians to impose upon their dupes with unimpeach- 
able certainty. To name a few of the most celebrated 
instances : the magic cup of Tantalus, which he could 
never drink though the beverage rose to his lips; the 
fountain in the island of Andros, which discharged wine 
for seven days, and water for the rest of the year ; the 
fountain of oil, which burnt out to welcome the return 
of Augustus from the Sicilian war ; the empty urns, which, 
at the annual feast of Bacchus, filled themselves with wine, 
to the astonishment of the assembled strangers; the 
glass tomb of Belus, which, after being emptied by 
Xerxes, could never again be filled ; the weeping statues 
of the ancients, and the weeping virgin of modern times, 
whose tears were uncourteously stopped by Peter the 
Great when he discovered the trick ; and the perpetual 
lamps of the ancient temples, were all the obvious effects 
of hydrostatical pressure. 



THE AIE-PUMP AND THE AIR-GUN. 

Immediately after the discovery of the principle of 
the Barometer by Torricelli, in the pressure of the air on 
the general surface, followed that of Otto von Guericke, 
whose aim seems to have been to decide the question 
whether a vacuum could or could not exist, by endeavor- 
ing to make one.* The first Air-pump constructed by 
Guericke was exhibited by him at the Imperial Diet of 
Ratisbon in 1654. It was an exhausting syringe, attach- 
ed underneath a spherical glass receiver, and worked 
somewhat like a common pump. The syringe was en- 
tirely immersed in water, to render it air-tight. The im- 
perfection of his mechanism, however, enabled Guericke 
only to diminish the aerial contents of his receiver, not 
entirely to empty them ; but the curious effects produced 
by even a partial exhaustion of air speedily excited at- 
tention, and induced our illustrious countryman, Robert 
Boyle, to construct an air-pump, in which the syringe 
was so far improved that the water could be dispensed 
with : he also first applied rack-work to the syringe. In 
the Journals of the Royal Society, January 2d, 1660, we 
find Boyle's Air-pump referred to as his Cylinder, and 
" that Mr. Boyle be desired to show his Experiments of 
the Air," which are printed in the Society's Trayisac- 

* This ingenious and ardent cultivator of science, who was bom at 
Magdeburg, in Saxony, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, in 
his original attempts to produce a vacuum, used first to fill his vessel 
with water, which he then sucked out by a common pump, taking 
care, of course, that no air entered to replace the liquid. It was by 
first filling it with water that Guericke expelled the air from the cop- 
per globe, the two closely fitting hemispheres comprising which six 
horses were then unable to pull asunder, although held together by 
nothing more than the pressure of the external atmosphere. This 
curious proof of the force or weight of the air, which was exhibited 
before the Emperor Ferdinand III. in 1G34, is commonly referred to 
by the name of the experiment of the Magdeburg Hemispheres. Gue- 
ricke, however, afterward adopted the method of exhausting a vessel 
of its contained air by the air-pump. 



56 EFFECTS OF THE AIR-PUMP. 

tio7is. The Air-pump constructed by Boyle was pre- 
sented to the Society by him in 166^, and it is now in 
the museum at Burhngton House : the pump consists of 
two barrels. 

We have the testimony of a French savant of the nine- 
teenth century, M. Sibes, that the Air-pump in Boyle's 
hands became a new machme ; and Professor Baden 
Powell considers that " he reduced it nearly to its pres- 
ent construction." It is true that the second syringe and 
the barometer gauge were afterward added by Hawksbee, 
and several minor improvements were made by Hooke, 
Mariotte, Gravesande, and Smeaton. All the alterations 
which have been made since the time of the invention, 
however important, relate to the mechanism only, and 
not to the principle on which the pump acts. 

Dr. Hutton has grouped these effects and phenomena 
of the Air-pump. In the exhausted receiver, heavy and 
light bodies fall equally swiftly : so a guinea and a feath- 
er fall from the top of a tall receiver to the bottom 
exactly together. Most animals die in a minute or two : 
however, vipers and frogs, although they swell much, 
live an hour or two, and, after being seemingly quite 
dead, revive in the open air. Snails survive about ten 
hours ; efts, two or three days ; leeches, five or six. 
Oysters live for twenty-four hours. The heart of an eel, 
taken out of the body, continues to beat for great part 
of an hour, and that more briskly than in the air. Warm 
blood, milk, gall, etc., undergo a considerable internes- 
cence and ebullition. Eggs of silkworms hatch in vacuo. 
Vegetation stops. Fire is extinguished ; the flame of a 
candle usually going out in one minute, and charcoal in 
about five minutes. Red-hot iron seems, however, not 
to be affected; sulphur and gunpowder are not lighted 
by it, only fused. A match, after lying seemingly ex- 
tinct for a long while, revives on readmitting the air. A 
flint and steel strike sparks of fire as copiously as in air. 
Magnets and magnetized needles act as in air. Heat 
may be produced by attrition. Camphor will not take 
fire ; and gunpowder, though some of the grains of a 
heap of it be kindled by a burning-glass, will not give 
fire to the contiguous grains. Glowworms lose their 
light in proportion as the air is exhausted ; but, on read- 



THEORY OF THE AIR-GUN. 57 

mitting the air, they presently recover. A bell, on being 
struck, is not heard to ring, or very faintly. Water 
freezes. A syphon will not run ; and electricity appears 
like the Aurora Borealis. 

De la Croix relates the following instance of sagacity 
in a cat, who, even under the receiver of an Air-pump, 
discovered the means of escaping a death which appeared 
to all present inevitable. '' I once saw," he relates, " a 
lecturer upon experimental philosophy place a cat under 
the glass receiver of an Air-pump for the purpose of de- 
monstrating that life can not be supported without air 
and respiration. The lecturer had already made several 
strokes with the piston in order to exhaust the receiver 
of its air, when the cat, who began to feel herself very 
uncomfortable in the rarefied atmosphere, was fortunate 
enough to discover the source from whence her uneasi- 
ness proceeded. She placed her paw upon the hole 
through which the air escaped, and thus prevented any 
more from passing out of the receiver. All the exertions 
of the philosopher were now unavailing : in vain he drew 
the piston ; the cat's paw effectually prevented its opera- 
tion. Hoping to effect his purpose, he again let air into 
the receiver, which as soon as the cat perceived, she 
withdrew her paw from the aperture ; but whenever he 
attempted to exhaust the receiver, she applied her paw 
as before. The spectators clapped their hands in ad- 
miration of the cat's sagacity ; and the lecturer was com- 
pelled to remove her, and substitute another cat that 
possessed less penetration for the cruel experiment." 

Although the Air-pump is scarcely two centuries old, 
yet the Air-gun, which is so nearly allied to it in the con- 
struction of its valve and condensing syringe, existed 
long antecedent to it ; for it is recorded that an Air-gun 
was made for Henry IV., by Marim, of Lisseau, in Nor- 
mandy, as early as 1408; and another was preserved in 
the armory at Schmetau, bearing the date of 1474. The 
Air-gun of the present day is different. Bishop Wilkins 
mentions " the Wind Gun" as a late ingenious invention, 
which discharges with force " almost equal to our pow- 
der guns." 

Professor Helmholtz, one of the latest illustrators of 
this instrument, thus lucidly explains its theory : " Into 

C2 



58 THEORY OF THE AIR-GUN. 

the chamber of an Air-gun we squeeze, by means of a 
condensing air-pump, a great quantity of air. When we 
afterward open the cock of the gun, and admit the com- 
pressed air into the barrel, the ball is driven out of the 
latter Avith a force similar to that exerted by ignited 
powder. Now we may determine the work consumed 
in the pumping-in of the air, and the living force which, 
upon firing, is communicated to the ball, but we shall 
never find the latter greater than the fc^-mer. The com- 
pressed air has generated no working force, but simply 
gives to the bullet that which has been previously com- 
municated to it. And while we have pumped for per- 
haps a quarter of an hour to charge the gun, the force is 
expended in a few seconds when the bullet is discharged ; 
but, because the action is compressed into so short a 
time, a much greater velocity is imparted to the ball 
than would be possible to communicate to it by the im- 
aided effort of the arm in throwing it." 

We may here relate a curious wager which Sir Robert 
Moray, at the request of Charles II., brought forward at 
a meeting of the Royal Society in 1671. It was, that 
the king wagered £50 to £5 "for the compression of air 
by water." It was accordingly resolved that Mr. Hooke 
should prepare the necessary apparatus for the experi- 
ment, which Sir Robert Moray said " might be done by 
a cane, so contrived that it should take in more and 
more water, according as it should be sunk deeper and 
deeper into it." The minutes of a subsequent meeting 
record the successful performance of the experiment, 
and that it "was acknowledged his majesty had won 
the wager." 



LIVING UNDEE WATBE: THE DIYING- 
BELL. 

When we consider the vast amount of treasure which 
has been from time to time lost in the depths of the sea, 
we shall not be surprised at the variety of the means 
which have been devised for the recovery of the hidden 
w^ealth. The principal of these contrivances is the Div- 
ing-bell,* with the operations of which the public have be- 
come familiar by the exhibition of an improved bell at 
our Polytechnic Institution f but the history of the in- 
vention, as well as the primitive means by which it was 
preceded, present many interesting instances of ingenu- 
ity directed to humane and praiseworthy purposes. 

In remote ages (says Professor Beckmann) divers were 
kept in ships to assist in raising anchors, and goods thrown 
overboard in times of danger ; and, by the laws of the 
Rhodians, they were allowed a share of the wreck pro- 
portioned to the depth in which they had gone in search 
of it. In war, they were often employed to destroy the 
works and ships of the enemy ; divers also fished for 

* For twenty years (1839-1859) there was exhibited at the Poly- 
technic Institution, No. 300 Regent Street, London, a diving-bell, 
which was put in operation daily. This bell was manufactured by 
Cottam and Hallen, and cost about £400. It is of cast iron, and 
weighs 3 tons ; 5 feet in height, and 4 feet 8 inches in diameter at the 
mouth. Within is affixed a knocker, under which is painted : 
" More air, knock once; 
Less air, knock twice ; 
Pull up, knock three times." 

The bell is about one third open at the bottom, has a seat all round 
for the divers, is lit by twelve openings of thick plate glass. It is sus- 
pended by a massive chain to a large swing-crane, with a powerful 
crab, the chain having compensation weights, and working into a well 
beneath. The air was supplied from two powerful air-pumps, of eight- 
inch cylinder, conveyed by the leather hose to any depth; the divers 
being seated in the bell, it was moved over the water, and directly let 
down within two feet of the bottom of the tank, and then drawn up, 
the whole occupying only two minutes and a half. The tank and the 
adjoining canals held 10,000 gallons of water. Each person descend- 
ing in the bell paid Is. ; and it has produced £1000 in one year. 



60 LIVING UNDER WATER. 

pearls. The statements of their remaining under water 
unassisted by apparatus for procuring air are, however, 
greatly exaggerated ; they speak of six hours, whereas 
six minutes Is the longest time of submersion recorded 
in modern times. 

Dr. Halley, in a paper in the Philosophical Transac- 
tions on '' the Art of living under Water," describes the 
divers for sponges in the Archipelago taking down in 
their mouths a piece of sponge soaked in oil, by which 
they were enabled to dive for a longer period than with- 
out it. As the bulk of the sponge must diminish the 
quantity of air which the diver could contain in his 
mouth, it does not appear probable that this practice 
could assist respiration. 

In connection with diving by the unassisted powers of 
the body. Professor Faraday relates this curious fact : 
The lungs are, m their natural state, charged with a 
large quantity of impure air; this being a portion of the 
carbonic acid gas which is formed during respiration, but 
which, after such expiration, remains lodged in the in- 
volved passages of the pulmonary vessels. By breathing- 
hard for a short time, as a person does after violent ex- 
ercise, this impure air is expelled, and its place is suppli- 
ed by pure atmospheric air, by which a person will be 
enabled to hold his breath much longer than without 
such precaution. Dr. Faraday states that, although he 
could only hold his breath, after breathing in the ordi- 
nary way, for about three quarters of a minute, and that 
with great difficulty, he felt no inconvenience, after mak- 
ing eight or ten forced respirations to clear the lungs, un- 
til the mouth and nostrils had been closed more than a 
minute and a half; and that he continued to hold breath 
to the end of the second minute. A knowledge of this 
fact may enable a diver to remain under water at least 
twice as long as he otherwise could do. Possibly the ex- 
ertion of sv/imming may have the eiFect of clearing the 
lungs, so that persons accustomed to diving may uncon- 
sciously avail themselves of this preparatory measure. 

The advantage of breathing condensed air, and there- 
by obtaining a larger supply of oxygen in the same bulk 
than with air of the ordinary pressure, is shown also in 
the following fact : After one of the disastrous occur- 



THE EARLIEST DIVING-BELL. 61 

rences at the works of the Thames Tunnel, Mr. Brunei, 
the engineer, descended in a diving-bell to examine the 
breach made by the irruption of the river into the tun- 
nel. The bell was lowered to the mouth of the opening, 
a depth of about thirty feet ; but the breach was too nar- 
row to allow it to go lower, in order that the shield and 
other works, which lay eight or ten feet deeper, might 
be examined from the bell. Mr. Brunei therefore took 
hold of the rope, and dived below the bell for the pur- 
pose. After he had remained under water about two 
minutes, his companion in the bell became alarmed, and 
gave a signal which caused Brunei to rise. On doing so, 
he was surprised to find how much time had elapsed ; 
and, on repeating the experiment, he ascertained that he 
could with ease remain fully two minutes under water, a 
circumstance accounted for by the condensation of the 
air in the bell, from which his lungs were supplied, by the 
pressure of a column of water nearly thirty feet high, 
which would condense the air into little more than one 
half of its usual bulk. 

Plans for enabling persons to remain for a longer pe- 
riod under water than is possible by the natural powers 
of the body are of very old date. Aristotle is supposed 
to intimate that in his time divers used a kind of kettle 
to enable them to continue longer under water ; but this 
interpretation is disputed. Beckmann states that the 
oldest information we have respecting the use of the Div- 
ing-bell in Europe is that of John Taisnier, quoted in 
Schott's Technica Citriosa^ Nuremberg, 1664, in which 
Taisnier relates : " Were the ignorant vulgar told that 
one could descend to the bottom of the Rhine, in the 
midst of the water, without wetting one's clothes, or any 
part of one's body, and even carry a lighted candle to 
the bottom of the water, they would consider it altogeth- 
er as ridiculous and impossible. This, however, I saw 
done at Toledo in Spain, in the year 1538, before the Em- 
peror Charles V. and almost ten thousand spectators. 
The experiment was made by two Greeks, who, taking a 
very large kettle suspended by ropes with the mouth 
downward, fixed beams and planks in the middle of its 
concavity, upon which they placed themselves, together 
with a candle. The kettle was equipoised by means of 



62 DIVING-BELLS. 

lead fixed round its mouth, so that, when let down to- 
ward the water, no part of its circumference should touch 
the water sooner than another, else the water might eas- 
ily have overcome the air included in it, and have con- 
verted it into moist vapor ; but if the vessel were gently- 
drawn up, the men continue dry, and the candle is found 
burning." Schott calls the machine " an aquatic kettle ;" 
he also describes " an aquatic armor," which would ena- 
ble those who were covered with it to walk under wa- 
ter ; and the former apparatus is re23resented, showing a 
man walking into the water with a covering like a small 
diving-bell over his head, descending nearly to his feet. 

In England, besides the su^Dposed contrivance of a Div- 
ing-machine by Roger Bacon, it is evident that the Div- 
ing-bell was known at a very early period. It is de- 
scribed more than once in the works of Lord Bacon as a 
machine used to assist persons laboring under water upon 
wrecks, by afibrding a reservoir of air to Avhich they 
might resort whenever they required to take breath. "A 
hollow vessel Avas made of metal, which was let down 
equally to the surface of the water, and thus carried with 
it to the bottom of the sea the whole air it contained. It 
stood upon three feet like a tripod, which were in length 
somewhat less than the height of a man, so that the div- 
er, when he was no longer able to contain his breath, 
could put his head into the vessel, and, having breathed, 
return again to his work" {Novum Organum^ lib. ii., p. 
850). 

The next use of the bell occurred in America, where, 
in 1642, it was used by one Edward Bedall, of Boston, 
to weigh the Mary JRose^ which had sunk the previous 
year. Bedall made use of two tubs, " upon which were 
hanged so many weights (600 lbs.) as would sink them 
to the ground." The experiment succeeded, and the 
guns, ballast, goods, hull, etc., Avere all transported into 
shoal water, and recovered. 

Some curious information on submarine operations was 
published in 1688 by Professor Sinclair, of Glasgow, show- 
ing how " to buoy up a ship of any burden from the 
ground of the sea ;" and stating that the late Marquis of 
Argyle, " having obtained a patent of the king on one of 
the Spanish Armada, which was sunk near the Isle of 



PHIPPS'S DIVING-BELL. 63 

Mull, anno 1588, employed James Colquhoun, of Glas- 
gow," who, " not knowing the Diving-bell, went down 
several times, the air from above being commimicated to 
his lungs by a long pipe of leather." The Armada ships 
sunk near Mull, according to the accounts of the Span- 
ish prisoners, contained great riches ; and this informa- 
tion excited from time to time the avarice of speculators, 
and gave rise to several attempts to procure part of the 
lost treasure. About 1664, an ingenious gentleman, the 
Laird of Melgim, " went down with a Diving-bell, and got 
up three guns." Sinclair also proposed to raise wrecks 
by the buoyancy of arks or boxes, open at the bottom, 
which were to be sunk full of water, and then filled with 
air, either by sending down casks of air, by bellows and 
a long tube, or otherwise. He alludes to the occasional 
use of casks for the purpose of raising vessels, and ex- 
plains why, when at a great depth, they are liable to be 
crushed by the pressure of the water ; showing that, by 
allowing the water to enter by a hole in the lower part 
of the cask, it would so compress the air as to produce 
an equilibrium of pressure, and thereby preserve it from 
fracture. 

About twenty years after this, William Phipps, the son 
of a blacksmith of Pemaquid, in the United States, and 
who had been brought up as a ship-carpenter at Boston, 
formed a project for searching and unloading a rich Span- 
ish wreck near the Bahamas, when Charles II. gave him 
a frigate to obtain the treasure. He sailed in 1683 ; but, 
being unsuccessful, returned in great poverty, thougli 
with a firm conviction of the practicability of his scheme. 
He then endeavored to procure a vessel from James II., 
failing in which he opened a subscription. At first he 
was laughed at; but at length the Duke of Albemarle, 
son of the celebrated General Monk, advanced Phipps a 
considerable sum toward the second outfit ; and having 
collected the remainder, he set sail in 1687, in a ship of 
200 tons burden, and reaching the wreck, when nearly 
worn out with fruitless labor he brought up, from six 
and seven fathoms depth, treasure of £300,000, of which 
Phipps received for his share £16,000, the Duke of Albe- 
marle £90,000, and the subscribers received the remain- 
der. Some envious persons then endeavored to persuade 



64 DIVING APPARATUS. 

the king to seize both the ship and the cargo, under a 
pretense that Phipps, when he solicited his majesty's per- 
mission, had not given accm*ate information respecting 
the business ; but James nobly replied that he knew 
Phipps to be an honest man, and that he and his friends 
should share the treasure among them : the king after- 
ward knighted Phipps, who had previously been made 
High Sheriff of New England. In 1691 he was made 
governor of his native colony. He was uneducated, and 
knew not how to read or write until he had grown to 
manhood ; but, by strong native abilities and restless en- 
terprise, he rose to distinction. He is erroneously said 
to have been the founder of the Mulgrave family, of 
which the present head is the Marquis of Normanby ; 
which mistake has, doubtless, arisen from one of the ear- 
ly members of that family. Captain Constantine John 
Phipps, commander of the unsuccessful Arctic Expedi- 
tion in 1773, having been raised to the British Peerage 
as Baron Mulgrave, of Mulgrave, co. York, in 1790. 

Among the oldest representations of Divmg apparatus, 
Beckmann mentions a print in editions of Vegetius on 
War, published in 1511 and 1532, representing ^ diver 
with a cap, from w^hich rises a long leathern pipe, term- 
inating in an opening which floats upon the surface of 
the water. Beckmann also names a figure, in Lorini's 
work on Fortification, 1607, which nearly resembles the 
modern Diving-bell, and consists of a square box, bound 
with iron, which is furnished with windows, and a seat 
for the diver. Lorini, who was an Italian, does not lay 
claim to the invention of this apparatus. 

In 1617, Francis Kessler described his Water-armor, 
intended for diving, but which Beckmann states to have 
been useless. In 1671, Wit sen taught, better than any of 
his predecessors, the construction and use of the Diving- 
bell, which, however, he erroneously says was invented 
at Amsterdam. About 1679, BoreUi, the celebrated phy- 
sician of Naples, invented an apparatus by which per- 
sons might go a considerable depth under water, remain 
there, move from place to place, and sink or rise at pleas- 
ure ; and also a boat in which two or more persons might 
row themselves under water ; but the practicability of 
these machines has been much controverted. 



THE DIVING-BELL. 65 

Dr. Halley, iii the paper in the Philosophical Trans- 
actio7is ah'eady quoted, describes the defects of the 
Diving-bell as previously used, and suggests a remedy 
for them. This paper alone would be sufficient, although 
it does not enter into the early history of the machine, 
to contradict the erroneous statement which has been 
made, that Halley was the inventor of the Diving-bell. 

In its simplest form, the Diving-bell is a strong, heavy 
vessel of wood or metal, made perfectly air and water- 
tight at the top and sides, but open at the bottom. If 
such a vessel be gradually lowered into the water in a 
perfectly horizontal position, the air which it contains 
can not escape, and therefore the vessel can not become 
full of water. This may be readily illustrated by plung- 
ing a glass tumbler in an inverted position into a vessel 
of water, and placing a bit of cork under the glass. If 
a bit of burning matter be laid upon the cork float, it will 
continue to burn, although the glass and all that it con- 
tains be plunged far beneath the water, thereby proving 
that the upper part of the cavity of the glass is occupied 
by air, and not by water. In this experiment, however, 
it will be observed that the water does fill a small part 
of the cavity of the glass, and that it rises more into it 
when it is plunged to a considerable depth than when 
the rim is only just immersed beneath the surface. This 
is occasioned by the condensation of the air contained in 
the glass, which, being very elastic and compressible, is 
condensed into a smaller space than it would occupy 
under the ordinary pressure of the atmosphere. 

We have now illustrated the principle of the Diving- 
bell : let us proceed to its application. When the bell is 
nsed for descending^to a very small depth, as the press- 
ure of the water is small, it will not rise in the bell to a 
sufficient height to be inconvenient ; but at the depth of 
thirty feet the pressure is so great as to compress the air 
into one half its original volume, so that the bell will be- 
come half full of water ; and at a greater depth the air 
will be still more compressed, and the water will rise pro- 
portionally higher in the bell. This condensation of the 
air does not materially interfere with respiration, pro- 
vided the descent of the bell be very gradual, as the air 
then insinuates itself into the cavities of the body, and 



66 THE DIVING-BELL. 

balances the pressure from without. The principal effect 
of the increased pressure is a pain in the ears, since the 
Eustachian tube does not allow the condensed air imme- 
diately to find its way into the cavities of the ear, so that 
the pressure on the outside of the tympanum is for a 
time unbalanced by a corresponding pressure from mth- 
in, and occasions a sensation like that of having quills 
thrust into the ears. This continues until the pressure 
of the air in the mouth, which at first has a tendency to 
keep the aperture of the Eustachian tube closed, forces 
it open ; an action which is accompanied by a noise like 
a slight explosion. The condensed air then enters the 
interior cavities of the ear, and by restoring the equilib- 
rium of pressure on each side the tympanum, removes 
the pain, which will return, and be remedied in the same 
manner, if the bell should descend to a greater depth. 
But, while the mere condensation of the air in the bell 
does not render it unfit for respiration, it w^ould soon be- 
come so if no means were provided for renewing it from 
time to time, as it becomes vitiated by repeated respira- 
tion. Dr. Halley provided a remedy for the inconven- 
ience by supplying the bell with fresh air without raising 
it to the surface. The air was conveyed in two thirty- 
gallon barrels, weighted with lead to make them sink 
readily. Each had an open bung-hole in the lower end, 
to allow water to enter during their descent, so as to 
condense the air. There Avas also a hole in the upper 
end of each barrel, to which was fitted an air-tight leath- 
ern hose. These air-barrels were attached to tackle, by 
which they were by two men let down and raised altern- 
ately, like two buckets in a well ; and by lines attached 
to the lower edge of the bell, they were so guided in 
their descent that the mouth of the hose always came 
directly to the hand of a man who stood upon the stage 
suspended from the bell. As the apertures of the hose 
were, during the descent, always below the level of the 
barrels, no air could escape from them ; and when they 
were turned up by the attendant, so as to be above the 
level of the water in the barrels, the air rushed out with 
great force into the bell, the barrels becoming at the 
same time full of water. 

By pending down the air-barrels in rapid succession^ 



H alley's diving-bell. 67 

the air was kept in so pure a state that Halley and four 
other persons remained in the bell, at a depth of nine or 
ten fathoms, for more than an hour and a half at a time, 
without injurious consequences ; and Halley states that 
he could have remained there as long as he pleased for 
any thing that appeared to the contrary. Halley ob- 
served that it was necessary to be set down gradually at 
first, and to pause at about the depth of twelve feet, to 
drive out, by the admission of a supply of air, the water 
which had entered the bell. When the Diving-bell was 
at the required depth, he let out, by a cock in the top of 
the bell, a quantity of hot impure air equal to the quan- 
tity of fresh air admitted from the barrels. This foul air 
rushed up from the valve with such force as to cover the 
surface of the sea with a white foam. So perfect was the 
action of this apparatus that Halley says he could, be re- 
moving the hanging stage, lay the bottom of the sea so 
far dry, within the circuit of the bell, that the sand or 
mud did not rise above his shoes. Through the strong 
glass window in the top, when the sea was clear, and es- 
pecially when the sun shone, sufficient light was trans- 
mitted to allow a person in the bell to write or read ; and 
when the sea was troubled or thick, which occasioned 
the bell to be as dark as night, a candle was burnt in it. 
Halley sometimes sent up orders with the empty air-bar- 
rels, writing them with an iron pen on plates of lead. 

Halley, having by these ingenious contrivances removed 
the principal difficulties attending the use of the diving- 
bell, foresaw its extensive application : as fishing for pearl, 
diving for coral, sponges, and the like, in far greater 
depths than had hitherto been thought possible ; also for 
laying the foundations of moles, bridges, etc., upon rocky 
bottoms ; and for the cleaning and scrubbing of ships' 
bottoms, when foul, in calm weather at sea, to which pur- 
poses the Diving-bell has, since the date of Halley's paper 
(1717), been applied. 

The next improver of the Diving-bell was Martin Trie- 
wald, " captain of mechanics, and military architect to 
his Swedish majesty," who had the sole privilege of div- 
ing upon the coasts of the Baltic belonging to the King 
of Sweden. His bell was of copper, tinned inside, small- 
er than that of Dr. Halley, and managed by two men. A 



68 IMPROVED DIVING-BELLS. 

stage for the diver to stand upon was suspended at such 
a depth below it that the man's head would be but little 
above the level of the water, where the air is cooler and 
fitter for respiration than in the upper part of the bell ; 
and a spiral tube was attached to the inside of the bell, 
with a wide aperture at the bottom, and a flexible tube 
and mouth-piece at the top, so that when the diver was 
up in the bell he might inhale cool air from the lower 
part, exhahng the foul air by his nostrils. In lieu of win- 
dows of flat glass, Triewald used convex lenses, such as 
are employed to this day,* to admit light to the bell. 

In 1775, Mr. Spalding, a grocer of Edinburgh, made 
certain improvements upon Halley's bell, in recovering 
part of the cargo of a vessel lost on the Fern Islands. 
Spalding's bell was of wood ; and to sink it he used, in 
addition to the weights attached to the rim, a large bal- 
ance-weight suspended by a rope from the centre, and 
which, by pulleys, the divers employed to anchor the bell 
at any required level ; and by hauling in the rope while 
the weight was at the bottom, the persons in the bell 
might lower themselves at pleasure. Another improve- 
ment was a horizontal partition near the top of the bell, 
which divided off* a chamber, with valves, to be filled 
either with water or with air from the lower part of the 
bell, so as to alter the specific gravity of the whole ma- 
chine, and thereby cause it to ascend or descend at pleas- 
ure. This bell also had an air apparatus like Halley's ; 
ropes were used instead of seats in the bell, so that the 
divers could raise themselves to the surface unassisted 
from above ; the bell could be removed at will from the 
point at which it descended, and a long-boat carried the 
signal-lines and the tackle for Avorking the air barrels. 
Mr. John Farey, jr., has improved upon Spalding's appa- 

* These convex glasses have been known to produce extraordinary 
effects. Thus, in 1828, Mr. Mackintosh, contractor for the govern- 
ment works at Stonehouse Point, Devon, had to descend in the Diving- 
bell with workmen to lay the foundation of a sea-wall. The bell was 
fitted with convex glasses in the upper part ; and Mr. Mackintosh states 
that on several occasions, in clear weather, he witnessed the sun's rays 
so concentrated as to burn the laborers' clothes when opposed to the 
focal point, and this when the machine was twenty-five feet under the 
surface of the water. — From the MS, Journal of the Bristol Nursery 
Library, 



WALKING UNDER WATER. 69 

ratus, by making the upper chamber of the bell without 
valves, and used it as a reservoir of condensed air, to be 
jBlled by forcing-pumps in the partition, besides other pro- 
visions. 

Smeaton first employed the Diving-bell in civil engi- 
neering operations in repairing the foundations of Hexham 
Bridge in 1779. His bell was an oblong box of wood, 
and supplied with a gallon of air a minute by a forcing- 
pump fixed at the top, which was not covered with 
water, the river being shallow. In 1788 Smeaton used 
a cast iron bell in repairing Ramsgate Harbor, the air 
being supplied through a flexible tube from a forcing- 
pump in a boat. Rennie improved the apparatus for 
moving the bell in any direction ; and in 1817 the wreck 
of the Royal George at Spithead was first surveyed by 
the aid of the Diving-bell. 

Many plans have been proposed for enabling a man to 
walk beneath the surface of the water by means of water- 
proof coverings for the head and upper part of the body, 
or of strong vessels in which every part but the arms 
should be incased ; a supply of air being either transmit- 
ted from above by a flexible pipe, or contained in the 
cavities of the protecting armor. This apparatus may 
be conveniently used at small depths; but at any con- 
siderable depth it is both dangerous and inconvenient, 
because the strength necessary to enable it to bear the 
pressure of the water is incompatible with the flexibility 
essential to the free use of the limbs. Dr. Halley in- 
vented a leaden cap for the diver's head, the front glazed 
for the eyes ; it contained a supply of air for two min- 
utes, and had affixed to it a pliable pipe, the other end 
being fastened to the bell, whence fresh air was convey- 
ed to the diver. 

At Newton-Bushel, in Devonshire, a gentleman con- 
trived an apparatus consisting of a large strong leather 
water-tight case, holding half a hogshead of air, and 
adapted to the legs and arms, with a glass in front, so 
that when the case was put on the wearer could walk 
about easily at the bottom of the sea, examine a wreck- 
ed vessel, and deliver out the goods ; the inventor of this 
apparatus used it forty years, and thereby acquired a 
large fortune. 



70 THE SUBMARINE NAUTILUS. 

Mr. Klingert, in 1798, constructed at Breslau tin-plate 
armor for the head and body, leather jacket, and water- 
tight drawers brass hooped; and a hehnet with two 
pipes, one for inhaUng, and the other for the escape of 
foul air. The body was kept down by weights. Con- 
trivances of this kind, in Avhich water-proof India-rubber 
cloth has been applied, are very numerous. In 1839 Mr. 
Thornthwaite made a hollow belt of India-rubber cloth, 
with a small strong copper vessel attached, and into 
which air is forced by a condensing syringe ; the belt is 
put on collapsed, and the diver descends ; but when he 
desires to rise, by a valve he lets out the condensed air 
from the copper vessel into the belt, which, as it ex- 
pands, buoys up the diver to the surface. 

Extraordinary substitutes have been sometimes made 
for the regularly-constructed Diving-bell. Thus, in the 
memorable recovery of treasure and stores from the wreck 
of the Thetis^ which sank in a cove southeast of Cape 
Frio in 1830, and was not attempted to be raised until 
fifteen months after, by the oflicers and crew of H.M.S. 
Lightning^ the Diving-bell consisted of a one-ton ship's 
Avater-tank, with eight inches of iron riveted to the bot- 
tom in order to give it more depth, and having attached 
to it eighteen pigs of ballast (17 cwt.) to sink it. Yet, 
with such a means of survey, often rendered unmanage- 
able by the swell of the South Atlantic rolling into the 
cove of nearly perpendicular granite rocks, from 100 to 
200 feet high, fifteen sixteenths of the property were re- 
covered. A model of this enterprise may be seen in the 
United Service Institution Museum, Scotland Yard. For 
the achievement Captain Dickson received the gold med- 
al of the Society of Arts. 

One of the latest improvements upon the old Diving- 
bell — the Nautilus Submarine Machine, an American in- 
vention — has been successfully employed by engineers. 
It is nearly cylindrical, with a spherical top ; and the 
working apparatus, on board a barge floating near, con- 
sists of a steam-boiler, a cylinder or reservoir, and a con- 
densing or air pump. The workmen being stationed in the 
machine, water is admitted into two chambers, to serve 
as ballast and cause the Nautilus to descend to the bot- 
tom, meanwhile air being drawn through hose from the 



THE SUBMARINE NAUTILUS. 71 

reservoir in the barge. As soon as the air thus drawn 
is sufficiently condensed, a cover to the bottom is raised, 
and communication obtained. Not only do persons thus 
remain under water for a considerable time, but should 
the hose communicating with the reservoir become dis- 
connected, no danger can ensue to those in the machine, 
as they can, by means of the compressed air within the 
bell itself, expel a portion of the water, and thus rise to 
the surface. 



AUTOMATA AND SPEAKING MACHINES. 

The amusing species of ingenuity which is requisite 
for the construction of these machines has been exercised 
to great extent. The name Automaton is derived from 
two Greek words meaning self-moved^ and is generally 
applied to all machines which are so constructed as to 
imitate any actions of men or the lower animals, and are 
moved by wheels, w^eights, and springs. 

The most ancient Automata are the Tripods which 
Homer mentions as having been constructed by Vulcan 
for the banqueting-hall of the gods, and which advanced 
of their own accord to the table, and again returned to 
their place. Self-moving Tripods are mentioned by Aris- 
totle ; and Philostratus informs us, in his Life of Apollo- 
nius, that this philosopher saw and admired similar pieces 
of mechanism among the sages of India. Beckmann 
hints that these Tripods were only small tables, or dumb- 
waiters, which had wheels so contrived that they could 
be put in motion, and driven to a distance, on the small- 
est impulse, like the fire-pans in the country beer-houses 
of Germany, at which the boors light their pipes. 

That Daedalus made Statues which could not only 
walk, but required to be tied up that they might not 
move, is related by Plato and Aristotle. The latter 
speaks also of a wooden Venus, which moved about in 
consequence of quicksilver being poured into its interior ; 
and before this method was known in Europe, Kircher 
proposed to put a small wagon in motion by adding to 
it a pipe filled with quicksilver, and heating it with a 
candle placed below it. Calistratus, the tutor of Daeda- 
lus,* however, states that his statues received their mo- 

* Daedalus, having been banished from Athens for killing his 
nephew, of whose rising genius he was envious, took refuge in Crete, 
and here constructed the celebrated Lab}Tinth, in the windings of 
which he was subsequently confined as close prisoner by Minos, whom 
he had displeased. His unrivaled resource, however, did not forsake 
him ; he manufactured for himself and his son Icarus waxen wings, 



FRIAR BACON S BRAZEN HEAD. 73 

tion from the mechanical powers, which is more probable 
than the opinion of Beckmann, that their being in a po- 
sition " as if ready to walk gave rise to the exaggeration 
that they possessed the power of locomotion." '' This 
opinion," Sir David Brewster observes, " however, can 
not be maintained with any show of reason ; for if we 
apply such a principle in one case, we must apply it in 
all, and the mind would be left in a state of utter skep- 
ticism respecting the inventions of ancient times" {JSfat- 
ural Magic^ p. 265). 

It is related by Aulus Gellius, on the authority of 
Favorinus, that Archytas of Tarentum (about 400 b.c.) 
constructed a Wooden Pigeon which was capable of fly- 
ing. Favorinus states that when it had once alighted, it 
could not resume its flight ; and Aulus Gellius adds, that 
it was suspended by balancing, and animated by a con- 
cealed aura^ or spirit. 

Of Albertus Magnus it is related that, among other 
prodigies, he constructed a Head of Brass, which is not 
only said to have moved, but to have answered ques- 
tions ! It is said to have occupied Albertus thirty years 
in its construction ; and that his disciple, Thomas Aqui- 
nas, was so frightened when he saw the head, that he 
broke it to pieces; when Albertus exclaimed, "Periit 
opus triginta annorum." Of contemporary date is the 
legendary story of " Friar Bacon's Brazen Head." It is 
pretended he discovered that if he could make a head of 
brass which should speak, and hear it when it spoke, he 
might be able to surround all England with a wall of 
brass. Bacon, with some assistance, accomplished his 
object, but with this drawback — the head was warrant- 
ed to speak in the course of one month, but it was quite 
uncertain when ; and if they heard it not before it had 

with which they flew over the sea. The father arrived safely in Sici- 
ly ; but the son, in spite of his father's example and admonition, flew 
so high that his wings were melted by the sun, and he fell into the 
sea, which from him was called the Icarian Sea. It was the ancient 
custom to deify the authors of any useful inventions. Now Daedalus 
was especially famous for the sails of ships; and "though they did 
not place him in the heavens, yet they have promoted him as near as 
they could, feigning him to fly aloft in the air, whereas he did hut 
fly in a swift ship, as Diodorus (and Eusebius) relates the historical 
truth on which that fiction is grounded." — Bishop Wilkins. 

D 



74 EAKLY AUTOMATA. 

done speaking, all their labor would be lost. Bacon, 
A^earied with three weeks' watching, set his man Miles 
to watch, with strictest injunction to awake him if the 
head should speak. The fellow heard the head at the 
end of one half hour say, " Time is ;" at the end of an- 
other, " Time was ;" and at the end of another half hour, 
"Time's past;" when down it fell with a tremendous 
crash ; but the blockhead of a servant thought his mas- 
ter would be angry if he disturbed him for such trifles ! 
Now Robert Recorde states that on the above account 
Bacon w^as considered to be a necromancer, "which 
never used that arte," but was an expert geometer and 
mathematician, as will be shown in a future page. 

Among the earliest pieces of modern mechanism was 
the curious Water-clock presented to Charlemagne by 
the Calif Haroun-al-Raschid. In the dial-plate were 
twelve small windows corresponding w^ith the divisions 
of the hours, indicated by the opening of the windows, 
which let out little metallic balls, which struck the hour 
by falling upon a brazen bell. The doors continued open 
till twelve o'clock, when twelve little knights, mounted 
on horseback, came out at the same instant, and, after 
parading round the dial, shut all the windows, and re- 
turned to their apartments. 

The next automaton was the Artificial Eagle, which 
John Miiller, or Regiomontanus, constructed, and Avhich 
flew to meet the Emperor Maximilian when he arrived 
at Nuremberg, June 7th, 1470. This eagle is said to have 
soared aloft, and met the emperor at some distance from 
the city ; then to have returned and perched upon the 
town-gate, and to have stretched out its wings and saluted 
the emperor when he approached ! Another of Muller's 
prodigies was an Iron Fly, put in motion by wheel-work, 
and which flew about and leaped upon a table ! But as 
none of Muller's contemporary writers speak of these 
pieces of mechanism, the tale of them is suspected to 
have been invented by Peter Ramus, who was never at 
Nuremberg till the year 1571. 

The Emperor Charles V. is known to have amused 
himself in his later years with Automata, made for him 
by an artist of Cremona. Among the prodigies which he 
wrought for the emperor were figures of armed men and 



EARLY AUTOMATA. ^ 75 

horses attacking with spears, while others beat^drums 
and played flutes ; besides, also, wooden sparrows which 
flew to and from their nests, and minute corn-mills which 
could be concealed in a glove. 

It will hardly excite surprise to find that the artists 
who produced Automaton figures were in some instances 
suspected of practicing the black art, and thus fell vic- 
tims to their own ingenuity. A melancholy incident, 
arising from the prevalence of this opinion, even so late 
as 1674, is related by Bonnet, in his History of Music, 
Alex, an ingenious Provengal mathematician and mecha- 
nician, had discovered the sympathy of sound in two in- 
struments tuned in unison. To illustrate his discovery, 
he constructed an Automaton Skeleton, placed a guitar 
in its hand, while by a mechanical contrivance the fingers 
moved, as though playing it : he then set it at a window, 
and at a proper distance played another guitar, which 
produced sound in the instrument held by the figure. 
The inhabitants of Aix (the town in which this was ex- 
hibited), believing th^t the skeleton really performed on 
the guitar, denounced Alex as a sorcerer, and he was 
condemned by the Parliament to be burnt alive, together 
with his figure. 

In the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences^ 1 729, is de- 
scribed a set of Automaton Actors representing a panto- 
mime. But previously to this, M. Camus had constructed, 
for the amusement of Louis XIV., a small coach drawn 
by two horses, etc. The coachman smacked his whip, 
and the horses set off, drawing the coach about a table ; 
and when opposite the king, it stopped, the page got 
down and opened the door, on which a lady alighted, 
with a courtesy presented a petition to the king, and 
then re-entered the carriage. The page then shut the 
door, the carriage proceeded, and the servant, running 
after it, jumped up behind it (Button's Mathematical 
Recreations), This is by no means inconceivable, but is 
somewhat hard to believe. 

Among the results of the development of the natural 
sciences in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries w^as 
the attempt to build Automaton figures which should 
perform the functions of animals by means of wheels and 
pinions. Thus, General Degennes, who invented machines 



76 vaucanson's automaton duck. 

in navigation and gunnery, and constructed clocks with- 
out spnngs or weights, made a peacock, w^hich could walk 
about as if alive, pick up grains of corn from the ground, 
eat and digest them. 

This automaton is thought to have suggested to M. 
Vaucanson the idea of constructing his celebrated Duck, 
perhaps the most wonderful piece of mechanism ever 
made. It resembled a living duck in size and appear- 
ance, ate and drank with avidity, performed the quick 
motions of the head and throat peculiar to the living an- 
imal, and, like it, dabbled in the water, which it drank 
with its bill. It produced also the sound of quacking. 
In its anatomical structure every bone of the real duck 
had its representative, and exhibited its proper move- 
ment, as its wings were anatomically correct; and the 
automaton picked up corn, swallowed it, and, being di- 
gested by a chemical solution, the food was conveyed 
away by tubes. This famous automaton was repaired 
by Robert Houdin, the Parisian conjuror, who, on ex- 
amining the mechanism of the Duck, found the trick to 
be as simple as it was interesting. " A vase," he tells us, 
" containing seed steeped in water, was placed before the 
bird. The motion of the bill in dabbling crushed the 
food, and facilitated its introduction into a pipe placed 
beneath the lower bill. The water and seed thus swal- 
loAved fell into a box placed under the bird's stomach, 
which was emptied every three or four days. The other 
part of the operation was thus effected : bread-crumb, 
colored green, was expelled by a forcing pump, and care- 
fully caught on a silver salver as the result of artificial 
digestion" (Houdin's Memoirs^ 1859). 

Vaucanson's Automata were imitated by one Du Mou- 
Hn, a silversmith, who traveled through Germany in 1752. 
Beckmann saw several of these automata, and among 
them an Artificial Duck, which was able to drink and 
move : its ribs were made of wire, and covered with duck's 
feathers, and the motion was communicated through the 
feet of the duck by means of a cylinder and fine chains, 
aa in a watch. 

Vaucanson also constructed a Flute-player, which really 
played on the flute by projecting air with its hps against 
the embouchure, producing the different octaves by ex- 



THE AUTOMATON FLUTE-PLAYER. 77 

panding and contracting their opening ; forcing more or 
less air in the manner of living performers, and regulat- 
ing the tones by its fingers. 

Of these automata, or rather androides, the Flute-player of Vau- 
canson is the only one of which a correct description has been pre- 
served, a particular account of its mechanism having been published 
in the Memoirs of the French Academy. The figure was about five 
feet six inches high, and was placed upon an elevated square pedes- 
tal. The air entered the body by three separate pipes, into which it 
was conveyed by nine pairs of bellows, which expanded and contract- 
ed in regular succession by means of an axis of steel turned by the 
machine. The three tubes, which conveyed the air from the bellows, 
after passing through the lower extremities of the figure, united at the 
chest, and, ascending from thence to the mouth, passed through two 
artificial lips. Within the cavity of the mouth was a small movable 
tongue, which, by its motion at proper intervals, admitted or intercept- 
ed the air in its passage to the flute. The fingers, lips, and tongue 
derived their specific movements from a steel cylinder turned by clock- 
work. The cylinder was divided into fifteen equal parts, which, by 
means of pegs pressing upon a like number of levers, caused the other 
extremities to ascend. Seven of these levers directed the fingers, 
having rods and chains fixed to their ascending extremities ; which, 
being attached to the fingers, made them ascend in proportion as the 
other extremity was pressed down by the motion of the cylinders, and 
vice versa. Three of the levers served to regulate the ingress of the 
air, being so contrived as to open and shut, by means of valves, the 
communication between the lips and reservoir, so that more or less 
strength might be given, and a higher or lower note produced, as oc- 
casion required. The lips were directed by four similar levers, one of 
which opened to give the air a freer passage, another contracted them, 
a third drew them backward, and the fourth pushed them forward. 
The remaining lever was employed in the dii-ection of the tongue, 
which, by its motion, shut or opened the mouth of the flute. The 
varied and successive motions performed by this ingenious androides 
were regulated by a contrivance no less simple than efficacious. The 
axis of the steel cylinder or barrel was terminated by an endless screw 
composed of twelve threads, above which was placed a small arm of 
copper, with a steel stud made to fit the threads of the woim, which, 
by its vertical motion, was continually pushed forward. Hence, if a 
lever were moved by a peg placed on the cylinder in any one revolu- 
tion, it could not be moved by the same peg in the succeeding revolu- 
tion, in consequence of the lateral motion communicated by the worm. 
By this means the size of the barrel was considerably reduced ; and 
the statue not only poured forth a varied selection of instrumental 
harmony, but exhibited all the evolutions of the most graceful per- 
former. 

It is curious to find that Vaucanson's uncle reproach- 
ed him by telling him that to construct the Flute-phiyer 
would be a great waste of time, and he did not set about 



78 AUTOMATON BOYS. 

the work until he lacked employment to while away the 
time after a long illness. He also made a Flageolet-play- 
er, who beat a tambourine with one hand. The flageolet 
had only three holes, by half stopping which some notes 
were made : the force of wind required to produce the 
lowest note was one ounce ; the highest, 56 lbs. French. 
Jacques Vaucanson, the maker of these Automata, vv^as 
a native of Grenoble, born in 1 709. His mother took him 
one day to a fete, when, peeping through a crack in the 
partition of a room, he saw part of the works of a clock 
which hung against the wall ; he w^as much struck, and, 
on his next visit, he drew with a pencil as much as he 
could see of the clock-springs and the escapement ; and 
by aid of some poor tools, he soon made a clock. Then 
he made a sort of baby-house chapel, with figures, which 
he caused to move. At length he devoted all his time 
to studying anatomy, music, and mechanics. He grew 
to be so celebrated, that the King of Prussia tried to at- 
tach Vaucanson to his court : he, however, remained in 
France, where Cardinal Fleury made him inspector of 
silk manufactures, for which he greatly improved the ma- 
chinery. This rendered Vaucanson unpopular, and he 
was nearly killed by an incensed mob. He died in 1782, 
having bequeathed his curious collection of machines to 
Louis XVI. 

Next deserve to be mentioned the Writing Boy of the 
older, and the Piano-forte-player of the younger Droz; 
which latter, when performing, followed its hands with 
its eyes, and at the conclusion of the piece bowed court- 
eously to the audience. Droz's Writing Boy was pub- 
licly exhibited in Germany some years ago. Its wheel- 
work is so complicated that no ordinaiy head would be 
sufficient to decipher its manner of action ; when, how- 
ever, we learn that the Boy and its constructor, being 
suspected of the black art, lay for a time in the Spanish 
Inquisition, and with difficulty obtained their freedom, 
we may infer that in those days even the mystery of such 
a toy was great enough to excite doubts as to its natural 
origin. 

M. Maillardet next constructed an Automaton Boy, 
which both wrote and drew with a pencil, kneeUng on 
one knee. When the figure began to work, an attendant 



MUSICAL AUTOMATA. 79 

dipped the pencil in ink, and adjusted the drawing-paper 
upon a brass tablet. Upon touching a spring, the figure 
proceeded to write or to execute landscape drawings. 
Maillardet also constructed a Magician, who answered 
questions inscribed in oval medallions upon a wall ; one 
of which the spectator having selected, it was shut up in 
a spring drawer. The magician then rose, consulted his 
book, and striking a wall with his wand, two folding 
doors flew open, and displayed the answer to the ques- 
tion. The door again closed, and the drawer opened to 
return the medallion. The machinery being wound up, 
the movements in about an hour answered fifty ques- 
tions ; and the means by which the medallions acted upon 
the machinery, so as to produce the proper answers to 
the questions which they contained, is stated to have 
been very simple. Maillardet likewise constructed other 
automata, including a Spider, made of steel ; and a Cat- 
erpillar, Lizard, Mouse, and Serpent, all with their nat- 
ural movements. In London he exhibited in Spring Gar- 
dens. 

Musical automata have obtained great celebrity. Mael- 
zel, the inventor of the Metronome, exhibited in 1809 an 
automaton trumpeter of his construction. From a tent 
he led out a figure in the uniform of a trumpeter of the 
Austrian dragoon regiment Albert, his trumpet being at 
his mouth. Having pressed the figure on the left shoul- 
der, it played the Austrian cavalry march, the signals, 
and a march and allegro by Weigl, accompanied by the 
whole orchestra. The dress of the figure was then 
changed into that of a French trumpeter of the Guard, 
when it played the French cavalry march, all the signals, 
a march of Dussek's, and an allegro of Pleyel, all accom- 
panied by the orchestra. The sound of the trumpet was 
pure, and more agreeable than that which the ablest mu- 
sician could produce from that instrument, because the 
breath of man gives the inside of the trumpet a moisture 
which is prejudicial to the purity of the tone. Maelzel 
publicly wound up his instrument only twice, and this 
was on the left hip. His most famous work was his 
Panharmo7iica^ a band of forty-two wind-instrument 
players, for which Cherubini deigned to compose, and 
Beethoven wrote his Battle symphony. Maelzel died in 



80 SPEAKING MACHINES. 

1855. Marreppe, in 1837, produced his automaton violin- 
player at Paris, which played airs a la Paganini; the in- 
terior was filled with small cranks, by which the motions 
were given to the several parts of the automaton at the 
conductor's will. 

In the speaking machines of antiquity, the head of Or- 
pheus in the island of Lesbos, and the tripod at Delphi, 
the answers were probably conveyed by the priests ; and 
Charles II. and his court were similarly deceived by a 
Popish priest in an adjoining chamber answering through 
a pipe the question proposed to the w^ooden head by 
whispering in its ear. 

The principle of a speaking-machine has, however, been 
develc^ed. Bishop Wilkins, in his Mathematical Magic^ 
illustrating the mode by which articulate sounds may be 
produced from automata, says : " Walchius thinks it pos- 
sible entirely to preserve the voice, or any words spoken 
in a hollow trunk or pipe ; and that, this pipe being right- 
ly opened, the words w^ill come out of it in the same or- 
der wherein they w^ere spoken, somewhat like that cold 
country where the people's discourse doth freeze in the 
air all winter, and may be heard in the next summer or 
at a great thaw ; but this conjecture will need no refuta- 
tion." 

Van Helmont, one of the first persons who wrote upon 
the adai^tation of the organs of the voice to the articula- 
tion of the letters, considered that the letters of the al- 
phabet constituted the order in w^hich articulate sounds 
were naturally produced by the structure of the tongue 
and larynx ; that, when one letter was uttered, the tongue 
was in its proper position for the pronunciation of the sub- 
sequent one. Thus, as several difierent sounds are form- 
ed merely by raising or depressing the tongue slightly, 
as in the sounds Aio^ Ah^ Ae^ A^ E^ it was easy to pro- 
duce them by means of a tube with a reed, and termina- 
ting with a bell. Mr. Willis has effected this by using a 
long tube with a reed, capable of being lengthened or 
shortened at pleasure. In the pronunciation of the vow- 
els, z, 6, a, o, ?/, it required to be shortest with the first, 
and in uttering the subsequent letters to be gradually 
lengthened. In this way it was easy to measure the 
length necessary for each note. When Ae was pro- 



SPEAKING MACHINES. 81 

nounced, the tube was 1 inch long ; Aio^ 3*8 inches ; Ah^ 
2*2 inches; A^ 0*6 inch; J^^ 0*3 inch. A speaking ma- 
chine invented in Germany pronounced distinctly ma7n- 
ma^ papa^ mother^ father^ summer. The instrument con- 
sists of a pair of bellows, to which is adapted a tube term- 
inating in a bell, the aperture of which is regulated by the 
hand, so as to produce the articulate sounds. This ma- 
chine was exhibited at the Royal Institution in 1835 by 
Professor Wheats tone. 

De Kempelen, the inventor of the automaton chess- 
player, also constructed a speaking automaton, in which 
he ultimately succeeded so far as to make it pronounce 
several sentences, among the best of which were, " Ro- 
manorum imperator semper Augustus ;" " Leopoldus se- 
cundus ;" " Vous etes mon ami ;" " Je vous aime de tout 
mon coeur." It was some years, however, before he could 
accomplish more than the simple utterance of the sounds 
o, ou^ and e. Year after year, we are told, was devoted 
to this machine ; but i or ^^, or any of the consonants, re- 
fused to obey his summons. At length he added at the 
open extremity of the vocal tube an apparatus similar in 
action and construction to the hum^an mouth with its 
teeth^ when he quickly succeeded in making it not only 
pronounce the consonants, but words, and even the sen- 
tences quoted above. He had previously imitated the 
tongue and its actions. The fact is interesting, not only 
as a rare instance of human ingenuity, but also as exhib- 
iting in a most striking light the beautiful adaptation of 
parts to their respective functions ; and that so perfect 
are the contrivances in Nature for particular ends, that, 
in order to arrive at any thing like an imitation of those 
functions, we must follow closely the method she em- 
ploys. 

In 1843 there was exhibited before the American Phil- 
osophical Society a speaking machine, susceptible of va- 
rious movements by means of keys, and thus made to 
enunciate various letters and words ; in enunciating the 
simple sounds could be seen the movements of the mouth, 
the parts of which were made of caoutchouc. The in- 
ventor, Mr. Reale, in a phrensy, destroyed this instru- 
ment, which it had taken him sixteen years to construct. 

Three years later, in 1846, there was shown at the 
D2 



82 SPEAKING MACHINES. 

Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, the JEuphonia of Professor ' 
Faber, of Vienna, the result of twenty-five years' labor. 
It consisted of a draped bust and waxen-faced figure, in 
which the sounds were produced by striking on sixteen 
keys, and thus were enunciated words. A small pair of 
bellows was worked with the nozzle into the back part of 
the head, and the mouth formations were of caoutchouc. 

Now, the several attempts of Cagniard la Tour, Biot, 
MuUer, and Steinle to produce articulate sounds, or even 
to imitate tlie human voice, have not been very success- 
ful; but M. Faber's machine — with its bellows worked 
by a pedal, and its caoutchouc imitation of the larynx, 
tongue, nostrils, and a set of keys by which the springs 
are brought into action — is considered the nearest ap- 
proach to perfect success. 

Reviewing the results of the Automata of the last 
century. Professor Helmholtz observes : " This inventive 
genius was boldly chosen, and was followed up with an 
expenditure of sagacity which has contributed not a lit- 
tle to enrich the mechanical experience which a later age 
knew how to take advantage of. We no longer seek to 
build machines which shall fulfill the thousand services 
required of one man, but strive, on the contrary, that a 
machine shall perform one service, but shall occupy, in 
doing it, the place of a thousand men." 

l^^evertheless, the above passion for automatic exhi- 
bitions introduced among the higher order of artists hab- 
its of nice and accurate execution in the formation of the 
most delicate pieces of machinery ; and the same com- 
bination of the mechanical powers which in one century 
enriched only the conjuror who used them, is in another 
employed in extending the power and promoting the 
civilization of our species. 

Robert Houdin is one of the latest adepts in automatic 
art. He was born at Blois, the son of a watchmaker, and 
had such early mechanical tastes that he professes to have 
come into the world metaphorically, " with a file or ham- 
mer in his hand." His aptitude showed itself in early 
efforts to train mice and canary-birds, to construct ingen- 
ious toys and model apparatus ; and he perfected him- 
self at Paris as a mechanist. In 1844 he made himself 
widely known by exhibiting an Automaton Writer, which 



AUTOMATON NIGHTINGALE. 83 

attracted the notice of Louis Philippe and his family. 
The figure drew, as well as wrote answers to questions, 
and by a curious coincidence its performance on this oc- 
casion was particularly ominous. When the Comte de 
Paris requested it to draw a crown, the Automaton began 
drawing the outline demanded, but its pencil broke, and 
the crown could not be finished. Houdin was going to 
recommence the experiment, when the king declined, 
with thanks. "As you have learned to draw," he said 
to the Comte de Paris, "you can finish this for your- 
self" This incident is characteristic as regards the tact 
of the king. 

Houdin, in his Memoirs^ relates the following remark- 
able proof of his assiduity in this mechanical phase of his 
life. He had received an order from a merchant of St. 
Petersburg to construct an Automaton Nightingale, and 
he agreed for a large sum to make a perfect imitation of 
the above bird. This undertaking ofiered some serious 
difiiculties ; for, he tells us, though he had already made 
several birds, their singing was quite arbitrary, and he 
had only consulted his own taste in arranging it. The 
imitation of the nightingale's pipe was much more deli- 
cate, for he had to copy notes and sounds which were 
almost inimitable. Fortunately, it was the season for this 
skillful songster, and Houdin resolved to employ him as 
his teacher. He w^ent constantly to the wood of Romain- 
ville, the skirt of which almost joined the street in which 
he lived ; and, laying himself on a soft bed of moss in 
the densest foliage, he challenged his master to give him 
lessons. (The nightingale sings both by night and day, 
and the slightest whistle, in tune or not, makes him 
strike up directly.) Houdin wanted to imprint on his 
memory the musical phrases with which the bird com- 
poses its melodies. The following are the most striking 
among them : Tiou-tiou-tiou^ ut-ut-ut-ut-ut^ tchitchou^ tchit- 
chou^ tchit-tchit^ rrrrrrrrrrrrrouit^ etc. Houdin had to 
analyze these strange sounds — these numberless chirps, 
these impossible " rrrrrouits," and recompose them by a 
musical process. To imitate this flexibility of throat, 
and reproduce the harmonious modulations, Houdin made 

* Memoirs of Robert Houdin, Embassador, Author, and Conjuror. 
Written by himself. 1859. 



84: EXPANDING MODEL. 

a small copper tube, about the size and length of a quill, 
in which a steel piston, moving very freely, produced the 
different sounds required ; this tube represented in some 
respects the nightingale's throat. This instrument had 
to work mechanically : clockwork set in motion the bel- 
lows, opened or closed a valve which produced the twit- 
tering, the modulation, and the shding notes, while it 
guided the piston according to the different degrees of 
speed and depth wanted. Houdin had also to impart 
motion to the bird : it must move its beak in accordance 
with the sounds it produced, flap its wings, and leap 
from branch to branch, which, however, was purely a 
mechanical labor. 

After repeated experiments, Houdin succeeded in cre- 
ating a system half musical, half mechanical, which only 
required to be improved by fresh studies from nature. 
Provided with this instrument, Houdin hurried off to 
the wood of Romainville, where, seating himself under 
an oak, near which he had often heard a nightingale sing, 
he wound up the clockwork, and it began playing in the 
midst of profound silence ; but the last notes had scarce- 
ly died away ere a concert commenced from various 
parts of the wood. This collective lesson did not suit 
his purpose, for he wished to compare and study, and 
could positively distinguish nothing. Fortunately for 
Houdin, all the musicians ceased, and one of them began 
a solo of dulcet sounds and accents, which Houdin most 
attentively followed, thus passing a portion of the night, 
when the conjuror returned home. His lesson had done 
him so much good, that the next morning he began 
making important corrections in his mechanism; and 
after five or six more visits to the wood, Houdin attain- 
ed the required result — the nightingale's song was per- 
fectly imitated. 

In the Great Exhibition of 1851 was shown a mechan- 
ical curiosity — an expanding Model of a Man, the con- 
struction of which has a romantic interest. It was the 
invention of the Polish Count Dunin, who in early life 
became involved in the insurrection of his countr;yTiien, 
and was banished. In his dreary exile he betook him- 
self to mechanical pursuits, that he might expiate his of- 
fense, real or imaginary, against the Emperor of Russia, 



EXPANDING MODEL. 85 

by showing that he might be useful if he were restored 
to his country. 

The model represents a man 5 feet high in the proportions of the 
Apollo Belvidere ; from that size it can be proportionally increased to 
6 feet 8 inches ; and as it is intended to measure the clothing of an 
army, it is capable of expansion and contraction in all its parts. The 
internal mechanism is completely concealed, the figure externally 
being composed of thin slips of steel and copper, by the overlapping 
of which expansion or contraction is exercised, the motion being com- 
municated by thin metal slides within the figure, these slides having 
pins worked in curved grooves in circular steel plates, which are put 
in revolution by a train of wheels or screws. A winding-key, turned 
right or left, effects the expansion or contraction noiselessly, and in 
the direction of the fibres of the muscles in the living subject. The 
mechanical combinations are composed of 857 framing-pieces, 48 
grooved steel plates, 163 wheels, 203 slides, 476 metal washers, 488 
spiral springs, 704 sliding plates, 497 nuts, 3500 fixing and adjusting 
screws, with numerous steadying pins, so that the number of pieces 
is upward of 7000. For this beautiful piece of mechanism a Great- 
Exhibition Council Medal was awarded to Count Dunin. 



THE AUTOMATON CHESS-PLAYER. 

We have reserved for a separate chapter the origin 
and history of this marvelous contrivance, which, at va- 
rious periods during the lapse of ninety years, has aston- 
ished and delighted the scientific world in several cities 
of Europe and North America. Its machinery has been 
variously explained. It was constructed in 1769 by M. 
de Kempelen, a gentleman of Presburg, in Hungary, 
long distinguished for his skill in mechanics. The Chess- 
player is a life-sized figure, clothed in a Turkish dress, 
sitting behind a large chest, three and a half feet long, 
two feet deep, and two and a half feet high. The player 
sits on a chair fixed to the chest, his right arm rests on 
the table or upper surface of the chest, and in the left he 
holds a pipe, which is removed during the game, as it is 
with this hand that he makes the moves. A chess-board, 
w^ith the pieces, is placed before the, figure. The exhib- 
itor first opens the doors of the chest, and shows the 
interior, with its cylinders, levers, wheels, pinions, and 
other pieces of machinery, which have the appearance 
of occupying the whole space. This machinery being 
w^ound up, the Automaton is ready to play ; and when 
an opponent has been found, the figure takes the first 
move, moves its head, and seems to look over every part 
of the chess-board. When it gives check to its opponent 
it shakes its head thrice^ and only tvnce when it checks 
the queen. It likewise sJiakes its head when a false move 
is made, replaces the adversary's piece on the square 
from which it w^as taken, and takes the next move itself. 
In general, though not always, the Automaton wins the 
game. Daring its progress, the exhibitor often stood 
near the machine, and wound it up like a clock after it 
liad made ten or twelve moves. At other times he went 
to a corner of the room, as if it were to consult a small 
square box, which stood open for this purpose. 

The earliest English account of the Automaton Chess- 



THE ATOMATON CHESS-PLAYER. 87 

player that we can find is in a letter from the Rev. Mr. 
Dutens to the Gentleman! s Magazine^ dated Presburg, 
January 24, 1771. The writer formed an acquaintance 
with the inventor, whom he terms M. de Kempett (not 
Kempelen), an Aulic counselor, and director general of 
the salt mines in Hungary. Mr. Dutens played a game 
at chess with the Automaton at Presburg ; th^ English 
embassador, Prince Giustiniani, and several English 
lords, standing round the table. 

**They all," according to Mr. Dutens, "had their eyes on M. de 
Kempett, who stood by the table, or sometimes removed five or six 
feet from it, yet not one of them could discover the least motion in 

him that could influence the Automaton He also withdraws 

to any distance you please, and lets the figure play four or five moves 
successively without approaching it. The marvelous in this Automa- 
ton consists chiefly in this, that it has not (as in others, the most cel- 
ebrated machines of this sort) one determined series of movements, 
but that it always moves in consequence of the manner in which its 
opponent moves, which produces an amazing multitude of different 
combinations in its movements. M. de Kempett winds up from time 
to time the springs of the arms of this automaton, in order to renew 
its motive force ; but this, you will observe, has no relation to its guid^ 
ing force or power of direction, which makes the great merit of this 
machine. In general, I am of opinion that the contriver influences 
the direction of almost every stroke played by the Automaton, al- 
though, as I have said, I have sometimes seen him leave it to itself 
for many moves together, which, in my opinion, is the most difficult 
circumstance of all to comprehend in what regards this machine." 

Mr. Staunton, the celebrated chess-player, states that 
De Kempelen constructed the Automaton " merely to af- 
ford a passing amusement to the Empress Maria Teresa 
and her court." Upon its completion, it was exhibited 
at Presburg and Vienna; in 1783, in Paris; and in that 
and the following year in London and different parts of 
England, without the secret of its movements having 
been discovered. "It was subsequently," says Mr. Staun- 
ton, " taken, by special invitation of the emperor, to the 
court of Frederick the Great at Berlin. This prince Avas 
devotedly attached to chess ; and in a moment of liberal- 
ity, he proffered an enormous sum for the purchase of the 
Automaton and its secret. The offer was accepted, and 
in a private interview with De Kempelen, he was fur- 
nished with a key to the mystery. In a short time, how- 
ever, Frederick threw aside the novelty so dearly bought. 



88 THE AUTOMATON CHESS-PLAYER. 

and for many years it lay forgotten and neglected among 
the lumber of his palace. 

" M. Kempelen died in 1804; but in two years after, 
when Napoleon I. occuj^ied Berlin, we find the Chess Au- 
tomaton in the field again under a new master. On one 
occasion of its exhibition at this period, Napoleon him- 
self is said to have entered the lists. After some half 
dozen moves, he purposely made a false move ; the figure 
inclined its head, replaced the piece, and made a sign for 
Napoleon to play again. Presently he again played false- 
ly : this time the Automaton removed the ofiending piece 
from the board, and played its own move. Napoleon 
was delighted ; and, to put the patience of his taciturn 
opponent to a severer test, he once more played incor- 
rectly, upon which the Automaton raised its arm, and, 
sweeping the pieces from the board, declined to continue 
the game." 

After a second tour of the leading cities of Europe, 
where it was received with unabated enthusiasm, in 1819 
the Automaton was again established in London, under 
M. Maelzel. For some years it was exhibited in Canada 
and the United States, and was finally understood to have 
returned to New York, where it was shown in the au- 
tumn of 1845. 

Meanwhile there were various attempts made to dis- 
cover the secret. The ingenious inventor never pretend- 
ed that the Automaton itself really played the game : on 
the contrary, he distinctly stated that " the machine was 
a bagatelle^ which was not without merit in point of mech- 
anism, but that the effects of it appeared so marvelous 
only from the boldness of the conception, and the fortu- 
nate choice of the methods adopted for promoting the 
illusion." It was surmised that the game was played ei- 
ther by a person inclosed in the chest, or by the exhib- 
itor himself; yet the chest, being nearly filled with ma- 
chinery, did not appear capable of accommodating even 
a dwarf; nor could any mechanical communication be- 
tween the exhibitor and the figure be detected. It was 
then thought to be influenced by a magnet, which the 
exhibitor disproved by placing a strong and well-armed 
loadstone upon the machine during the game, which did 
not affect the moving power. The original conjecture, 



THE AUTOMATON CHESS-PLAYER. 89 

that the player was concealed in the interior, was then 
revived; and in 1789, Mr. J. F. Freyhere, of Dresden, 
published a pamphlet, in which he endeavored to explain 
by colored plates how the effect was produced ; and he 
concluded " that a well-taught boy, very thin and tall of 
his age (sufficiently so that he could be concealed in a 
drawer almost immediately under the chess-board), agi- 
tated the whole." 

In an earlier pamphlet, published in Paris in 1785, the 
writer supposed the machine was put in motion by a 
dwarf, a famous chess-player, his legs and thighs being 
concealed in two hollow cylinders, while the rest of his 
body was out of the box, and hidden by the robes of the 
figure. 

Sir David Brewster, in his Ncitural Magic^ describes 
the secret as shown in a pamphlet published anonymous- 
ly, and the machine to be capable of accommodating an 
ordinarily - sized man; and he explains, in the clearest 
manner, how ^' the inclosed player takes all the different 
positions, and performs all the motions which are neces- 
sary to produce the effects actually observed." Sir Da- 
vid devotes eight pages of his work, with illustrative 
wood-cuts, to this explanation, and endeavors to shov/ 
how the real player may be concealed in the chest, and 
partly in the figure : " as his head is above the chess- 
board, he will see through the waistcoat of the figure, as 
easily as through a veil, the whole of the pieces on the 
board ; and he can easily take up and put down a chess- 
man without any other mechanism than that of a string 
communicating with the finger of the left hand of the 
figure," the right hand being within the chest, to keep in 
motion the wheel-work for producing the noise heard dur- 
ing the moves, and to move the head, tap the chest, etc. 

Mr. Staunton also maintains that the chess-player who 
directed the Automaton was really hidden in the interior ; 
that the machinery so ostentatiously exhibited was a 
sham, yet so contrived that it would collapse or expand, 
to suit the exigencies of the hidden agent's various posi- 
tions ; while the chest was exhibited, he was in the fig- 
ure, and when the figure, he was in the chest. While 
conducting-a game, he sat at the bottom of the chest,* 
with a small pegged chess-board and men on his lap, and 



90 THE AUTOMATON CHESS-PLAYER. 

a lighted taper affixed ; within reach were a handle by 
which he could guide the arm of the Automaton, an elas- 
tic spring for moving its fingers, and cord in communica- 
tion with bellows for producing the sound of " Check." 
The most ingenious part of the contrivance remains to be 
told. M. Mouret, the celebrated chess-player, who direct- 
ed the movements of the Automaton for some years, 
states that the concealed player was seated immediately 
under the chess-board of the Automaton, and from the 
under side, at every one of the sixty-four squares, was 
suspended by the finest silk a tiny metallic ball ; and as 
each of the chess-men had a magnet inside, when it was 
placed upon a square, it drew up the ball beneath, while 
the balls beneath the other squares remained suspended. 
The pieces being arranged, the Automaton opened the 
game ; and turning the handle of the arm of the figure, 
and putting in motion the finger-sprmgs, he caused it to 
take up the piece to be played, which was indicated by 
the falling ball, and when it was placed upon a square, 
the ball was drawn up. Pie then repeated the move on 
the small board in his lap, and thus the game proceeded.** 
Thus the explanation rested until the publication of 
the Memoirs of Robert Houdin, who therein relates the 
origin and construction of the Automaton Chess-player 
in substance as follows : 

In 1769 there fell, fighting in a revolt at Riga, an officer named 
Worousky, a man of great talent and energy, of short stature, but well 
built. He had both thighs shattered by a cannon ball, but escaped 
by throwing himself into a hedge behind a ditch. At nightfall Wo- 
rousky dragged himself along, with great difficulty, to the adjacent 
house of OslofF, a physician, whose benevolence w^as well known ; and 
the doctor, moved by his sufferings, attended upon and promised to 
conceal him. His wound was serious, gangrene set in, and his life 
could only be saved at the cost of half his body. The amputation was 
successful, and Worousky saved. 

Meanwhile, M. de Kempelen, the celebrated mechanician, came to 
Riga to visit M. Osloff, who confided to him his secret of concealing 
Worousky, and begged his aid. Though startled at the request — for 
he knew that a reward was ofiered for the insurgent chief, and that 
the act of humanity he was about to assist in might send him to Sibe- 
ria — still, M. de* Kempelen, on seeing Worousky's mutilated body, felt 
moved with compassion, and began contriving some plan to secure his 
escape. 

* Selected and abridged from the Illustrated London News, Dec. 
23, 1845. 



THE AUTOMATON CHESS-PLAYEK. 91 

Dr. OslofF was a passionate lover of chess, and had played numer- 
ous games with his patient during his tardy convalescence ; but Wo- 
rousky was so strong at the game that the doctor was always defeat- 
ed. Then Kempelen joined the doctor in trying to defeat the skillful 
player, but it was of no use; Worousky was always the conqueror. 
His superiority gave M. de Kempelen the idea of the famous Autom- 
aton Chess-player. In an instant his plan was formed, and he set to 
work immediately ; and the most remarkable circumstance is, that 
this wonderful chef-d'oeuvre.^ which astonished the whole world, was fin- 
ished within three months. 

M. de Kempelen was anxious that his host should make the first 
trial of his Automaton ; so he invited him to play a game on the lOtli 
of October, 1769. The Automaton represented a Turk of the natural 
size, wearing the national costume, and seated behind a box of the 
shape of a chest of drawers. In the middle of the top of the box was 
a chess-board, with the pieces, for play. 

Prior to commencing the game, the artist opened several doors in 
the chest, and M. OslofF could see inside a number of wheels, pulleys, 
cylinders, springs, etc., occupying the larger part. At the same time 
he opened a long drawer, from which he produced the chess-men and 
a cushion, on which the Turk was to rest his arm. This examination 
ended, the robe of the Automaton was raised, and the interior of the 
body could also be inspected. 

The doors being then closed, M. de Kempelen wound up one of the 
wheels with a key which he inserted in a hole in the chest; after 
which the Turk, with a gentle nod of salutation, placed his hand on 
one of the pieces, raised it, deposited it on another square, and laid 
his arm on the cushion before him. The inventor had stated that, as 
the Automaton could not speak, it would signify check to the king by 
three nods, and to the queen by two. 

The doctor moved in his turn, and waited patiently till his adver- 
sary, whose movements had all the dignity of the Sultan, had moved. 
The game, though slow at first, soon grew animated, and the doctor 
found he had to deal with a tremendous opponent ; for, in spite of all 
his efforts to defeat the figure, his game was growing quite desperate. 
It is true, though, that for some minutes past the doctor's attention 
had appeared to be distracted, and one idea seemed to occupy him. 
But, while hesitating whether he should impart his thoughts to his 
friend, the figure gave three nods. The game was over. 

''By Jove!" the loser said, with a tinge of vexation, w^hich the 
sight of the inventor's smiling face soon dispelled, "if I were not cer- 
tain that Worousky is at this moment in bed, I should believe I had 
been playing with him. His head alone is capable of inventing such 
a checkmate. And besides," the doctor said, looking fixedly at M. 
de Kempelen, "can you tell me why your Automaton plays with the 
left hand, just like Worousky?" (The Automaton Chess-player al- 
ways used the left hand — a defect falsely attributed to the careless- 
ness of the constructor. ) 

The mechanician began laughing, and at length confessed to his 
friend that he had really been playing with Worousky. 

"But where the deuce have you put him, then?" the doctor said, 
looking round to try and discover his opponent. 



92 THE AUTOMATON CHESS-PLAYER. 

The inventor laughed heartily. 

*'Well, do you not recognize me?" the Turk exclaimed, holding 
out his left hand to the doctor in reconciliation, while Kempelen raised 
the robe and displayed the poor cripple stowed away in the body of the 
Automaton. 

M. Osloff could no longer keep his countenance, and he joined the 
others in the laughter. But he was the first to stop, for he wanted an 
explanation. 

" But how do you manage to render Worousky invisible ?" 

M. de Kempelen then explained how he concealed the living au- 
tomaton before it entered the Turk's body. 

*' See here," he said, opening the chest; '* these wheels, pulleys, and 
cranks, occupying a portion of the chest, are only a deception. The 
frames that support them are hung on hinges, and can be turned back 
to leave space for the player, while you were examining the body of 
the Automaton. 

*' When this inspection was ended, and as soon as the robe was al- 
lowed to fall, Worousky entered the Turk's body we have just ex- 
amined, and, while I was showing you the box and the machinery, he 
was taking his time to pass his arms and hands into those of the figure. 
You can understand that, owing to the size of the neck, which is hid- 
den by the broad and enormous collar, he can easily pass his head into 
this mask, and see the chess-board. I must add, that when I pretend 
to wind up the machine, it is only to drown the sound of Worousky's 
movements." 

M. Houdin relates that the mutilated Pole once had the 
audacity, in his clockwork case, to visit St. Petersburg, 
and play a game of chess with the Empress Catharine, 
against whom he had revolted. 

It is hard to reconcile these conflicting statements, un- 
less, having allowed Houdin's account of the origin of the 
Automaton to be correct, we consider the other narratives 
to explain the modes by which the Automaton was work- 
ed after Worousky had ceased to be the prime mover of 
this extraordinary deception. 

Substitutes for the natural limbs have been constructed 
with great success. In 1845, Magendie described to the 
French Academy a pair of artificial arms, the invention 
of M. Van Petersen, with one of which a mutilated soldier 
raised a full glass to his mouth, and drank its contents 
without spilling a drop of the liquor ; he also picked up 
a pin, a sheet of paper, etc. Each arm and hand, with 
its articulations, weighs less than a pound ; and a sort 
of stays is fixed round the person, and from these are 
cords made of catgut, which act upon the articulations, 
according to the motion given to the natural stump. 



NAVIGATION OF THE AIR: ADVENTURES 
WITH THE BALLOON. 

The idea of constructing a machine which should en- 
able us to rise into, and sail through the air (hence the 
term aeronaut)^ would seem to have occupied the human 
mind even in ancient times ; but it was never realized 
until the beginning of the present, or the close of the last 
century. 

The notion of imitating the flying of birds is very an- 
cient. Passing over the winged gods, the stories of 
Abaris, Daedalus, and the like, which, with many others, 
might have been purely imaginative, and not traditions 
of any previous reality, we come to Strabo's account of 
the Capriobalse, a Scythian people, who (so the word has 
been foolishly interpreted) raised themselves by smoke, 
or, more properly, heated air. The Carolinians are also 
mentioned by the Jesuit' Cantova as having a fable about 
a female deity who raised herself to heaven by the smoke 
of a great fire. We may likewise mention the wooden 
pigeon of Archytas, which had air inclosed in it, and which 
Lucian professes to have seen raise itself in the air ; the 
fable in British mythology of Bladud, the father of the 
well-known Lear, which resembles that of Dsedalus ; and 
many others, all of which serve to show that the notion 
of the possibility of raising a man or a machine was very 
widely extended in the ancient world. Roger Bacon 
says that there certainly is a flying machine^ o^ which he 
knows the name of the inventor, but which he has neither 
seen himself, nor does he know any one who has. Van 
Helmont and others proved the possibility of flying by 
vety eloquent discourses, which convinced all hearers — 
but not their posterity. Sometimes, however, the evi- 
dence of these ancient wonders is strangely shaken by 
historical fact ; as in the case of Regiomontanus's wood- 
en eagle, which flew out of Nuremberg to meet Charles 
V. ; for, although this statement is testified by Sextus of 



96 BISHOP WILKINS ON FLYING. 

Ratisbon, Kircher, Porta, Schott, Gassendi, Lana, Ramus, 
and Bishop Wilkins, they have overlooked the fact that 
Regiomontanus died twenty-five years before Charles V. 
was born ! 

The Jesuit Francis Lana (a.d. 1670), among many other 
projects, has given, perhaps, the earliest idea of a real 
Balloon, as we have defined it, and his first step was pure- 
ly theoretic. He proposes to raise a vessel by means of 
metal balls, strong enough, when expanded, to resist the 
pressure of the external air, but at the same time so thin 
as, in the same circumstances, to be lighter than their 
bulk of air. Had the good father made the experiment, 
he would have found that strength to resist the external 
air is incompatible with the necessary degree of thinness 
in the material. Still, there w^as one avenue to the object 
of pursuit, to which the common and well-known princi- 
ples of hydrostatics appeared to direct the way, though 
it had been of all others the most neglected : this was the 
obvious one that any body which is specifically, or bulk 
for bulk, lighter than common air, will rise and swim in 
it, and submit to the action of the wind ; therefore, if any 
body could be found which was in any considerable de- 
gree lighter than air, by making it of a sufficient size, a 
person might attach himself to it, and float along with 
it. Another century, however, elapsed before this was 
accomplished. 

Bishop Wilkins (who lived from 1614 to 1672) was an early disciple 
of this art. In his Discovery of a New World, or That the World 
may be a Moon, one of his propositions is, " That 'tis possible for some 
of our posterity to find out a conveyance to this other world," which 
can nfet seem more incredible to us than did the invention of ships : 
" So bold was he, who in a ship so frail 
First ventured on the treacherous waves to sail." 

The bishop agrees with Kepler, that whenever the art is invented by 
which a man may be conveyed some twenty miles high, or there- 
abouts, it is not altogether improbable that some other art may enable 
him to fly to the moon ; and supposing that he could fly as fast and 
as long as the swiftest bird, were he to keep on in a straiglit line, and 
fly 1000 miles a day, he would not arrive at the moon under 180 days, 
or half a year. As for the means of flying, Wilkins points to angels 
pictured ^ith wings, which Mercury and Daidalus are feigned to have 
had ; that if there be, as Marco Polo says, a roc in Madagascar 
*' which can scoop up a horse and his rider, or an elephant," then a 
man may ride up to the moon, as Ganymede does upon an eagle. Or 
the bishop affirms it possible to make a Flying Chariot large enough 



FLYING MACHINE. 97 

to carry up several men, with their food and luggage, on the same 
principle by which Archytas made his wooden dove, and Kegiomon- 
tanus his wooden eagle. The bishop also devotes a chapter of his 
Mathematical Magic to solving the difficulties that seem to oppose the 
possibility of a Flying Chariot, and concludes with suggesting the 
wings of the bat as preferable to those of a bird, gravely adding that 
the bat's wings are most easily imitated, and perhaps Nature intended 
by them to direct us in such experiments. Wilkins was also an early 
advocate of the '* pleasant uses" of heated air ; in his Mathematical 
Magic he minutely describes the moving of sails in a chimney, as in 
the smoke-jack; and he adds that Ctesibius "made by this kind of 
motion his representations of living creatures, whether birds or beasts." 

Leaving these phantasies, we reach some practical il- 
lustrations of the art. In 1709, Gusman, a Portuguese 
friar, constructed a machine in the form of a bird, with 
tubes and bellows to supply the wings Avith air ; he was 
rewarded with a liberal pension, but his machine failed. 
Gusman, however, was not discouraged, for in 1736 he 
constructed a wicker basket 7 feet in diameter, and cov- 
ered with paper, which rose to the height of 200 feet in 
the air, the success of which experiment procured for the 
inventor the reputation of being a sorcerer. 




M. Laurent's Bird Machine. 



As air was considered the lightest of all things, there 
appeared little reason to believe that the discovery of 
flying would be made, when in 1755 Joseph Gallien., of 
Avignon, in a treatise, recommended the employment of 
a bag of cloth or leather, filled with air lighter than that 

E 



98 HYDROGEN GAS DISCOVERED. 

of the atmosphere. Eleven years later, in IVGG, this de- 
sideratum was supplied by Mr. Cavendish announcing to 
the world that the gas now known as hydrogen, but at 
that time called inflammable air, was at least seven times 
lighter than common air. This important discovery led 
Dr. Black to suggest in his lectures that if a bladder suf- 
ficiently light and thin were filled with this air, it would 
form a mass much lighter than the same bulk of atmos- 
pheric air, and that it would float in the latter. Dr. 
Black, however, did not pursue the subject farther ; and 
it rested for nearly twenty years, until Cavallo, reflecting 
on Dr. Black's remarks, in 1782 made several experiments 
to elevate a bag filled with hydrogen gas: he tried the 
largest and thinnest bladders, but they were found some- 
what too heavy for the purpose. He also tried bags of 
the finest China paper, of such a size that, had it been 
possible to fill them with the gas, their ascent would 
have been certain ; but the experiments failed, for, though 
common air would not pass through this paper, hydrogen 
gas passed through it like water through a sieve. In short, 
Cavallo was completely successful only in filling soap- 
bubbles with the gas, which was easily done by pressing 
small quantities of hydrogen out of a bladder, while a 
small pipe was immersed in a solution of soap and water ; 
these bubbles rapidly ascended in the ambient air, and 
they may be considered as the first inflammable air-bal- 
loons that were ever exhibited. Cavallo read to the 
Royal Society the paper in which he gave an account of 
his experiments, on the 20th of June, 1782. 

Here it should be observed that, although the art of 
flying had been diligently studied, or at least discussed, 
for centuries, the exceedingly simple contrivance we shall 
presently describe had not been tried, or even mentioned, 
by any of the projectors, some of whom were men of in- 
genuity. Nothing can set in a stronger light the antip- 
athy of the earlier moderns to experimental research. 
And it is no small honor to the Montgolfiers, that the 
hint given by Lana, together with the every-day exper- 
iment of soap-bubbles, and the like, should have remain- 
ed without results to their time. 

"We consider" (says an able writer) "him the in- 
ventor of the balloon who raised a mass of solid substance 



THE MONTGOLFIERS. 99 

to some considerable height in the atmosphere. But if 
we were to take the license which is so frequent, of dis- 
puting the right of an inventor on account of some ex- 
periments containing a principle common with his own, 
we might say that this machine has been invented from 
time immemorial in the ascent of soap-bubbles; or we 
* might cite Candido Buono, who made one scale of a bal- 
ance ascend by rarefying with a red-hot iron the air be- 
neath it." We have seen how Cavendish discovered the 
gas seven-fold lighter than air; how Black took up its 
application, but then halted ; and how Cavallo followed, 
but could not succeed in raising, by means of hydrogen, 
any thing heavier than a soap-bubble. We shall next 
show that, natural as it might appear to use hydrogen for 
the purpose, the experiment succeeded only with a very 
different agent. From this point practical aerostation 
commences. 

In the last-mentioned year, 1782, but unknown to the 
English philosophers, two brothers, Stephen and Joseph 
de Montgolfier, paper manufacturers at Annonay, about 
thirty-six miles from Lyons, formed a scheme which led 
in a short time to the practice of aerostation on a large 
scale. They had both studied natural philosophy and 
chemistry, and their business gave them facilities for pro- 
curing large masses of light envelopes, so that we owe 
the invention of balloons to one of two accidents, either 
to that of philosophers being paper-makers, or to that of 
paper-makers being philosophers. Stephen Montgolfier 
is said to have derived the first idea from the accidental 
circumstance of the paper cover of a conical sugar-loaf 
which he had flung into the fire becoming inflated with 
smoke, and remaining suspended in the chimney. Struck 
with the notion of confining something lighter than air 
in a recipient as the means of making the latter ascend, 
the Montgolfiers tried this method at about the same pe- 
riod as M. Cavallo, by confining hydrogen in paper. They 
succeeded to some extent ; but the gas so soon escaped 
through the paper that they abandoned the idea of any 
thing like perpetual elevation by means of it. They next 
thought that, as it was supposed the elevation of the 
clouds was caused by the presence of electric matter, and 
as it seemed to them from experiments that electrified 



100 s. montgolfier's first experiment. 

bodies were diminished in weight, it might be possible 
to raise a surface of great extent, in proportion to its 
specific gravity, by means of electricity. After trying 
various methods, they applied fire underneath a balloon, 
oiot to rarefy the inclosed air^ but " as well to increase 
the layer of electric fluid upon the vapor in the vessel as 
to divide the vapor into smaller molecules, and dilate the * 
gas in which they are suspended." Thus they thought 
they were imitating a cloud by electrifying the gases and 
vapors contained in the atmosphere. 

The first experiment was made at Avignon by Stephen 
Montgolfier. He prepared a bag of silk in the shape of 
a parallelopipedon ; its capacity was about forty cubic 
feet, and he applied to its aperture burning paper, and 
inflated the bag with a kind of cloud, when the bag as- 
cended rapidly to the ceiling of the room. This was re- 
ferred to the electric theory, as above ; but in the report 
made to the Academy of Sciences (December, 1783) by 
the commission appointed to investigate Montgolfier' s in- 
vention, the inventors are spoken of as simply rarefying 
the air contained in the balloon, when they had probably 
arrived at the correct view of the subject. Their first 
public experiment was made at Annonay, June 5, 1783. 
At the appointed time, nothing was seen in the public 
place of the town but immense folds of paper, 100 feet 
in circumference, and fixed to a nearly spherical wooden 
frame, the whole weighing about 500 lbs., and contain- 
ing 22,000 cubic feet, French measure. It was suspend- 
ed, in a flaccid state, on a pole thirty-five feet high : straw 
and chopped hay were burnt underneath the opening at 
the bottom, the heated air from which entered ; the mass 
gradually assumed the form of a large globe, and ascend- 
ed with such velocity, that in less than ten minutes it 
reached the elevation of 6000 feet. A breeze carried it 
in a horizontal direction to the distance of 7668 feet, 
when it fell gently on the ground. Machines on this 
principle were called Montgoljiers^ to distinguish them 
from the hydrogen balloons which were made immediate- 
ly afterward. 

The news of this phenomenon flew to Paris, where it 
immediately produced an excitement almost unheard of 
before. That hydrogen could not have been used was 



THE FIEST AERONAUTS. 



101 




The first MontgoLfier. 

evident from the description given, namely, that it was 
half as heavy as air. On August 23 the experiment was 
resumed at Versailles with hydrogen inclosed in lutestring 
which had been dipped in a solution of India-rubber. The 
gas was obtained in the usual manner by the action of di- 
luted sulphuric acid on iron filings ; but the machine was 
not filled until August 26, when it was allowed to rise 
100 feet, to which height it was confined by ropes. Next 
day the balloon was conveyed to the Champ de Mars, 
where it was set free in the presence of an enormous 
crowd. It fell five leagues from Paris, after being about 
a quarter of an hour in the air. 

Meanwhile Joseph Montgolfier arrived in Paris, where 
he exhibited one of his balloons on the 12th of September ; 
and on the 19th, in front of the Palace of Versailles. 
The interest attached to the mere ascent of the balloon 
alone here ceases. Various repetitions of the experi- 
ment were made at Paris previously to the time when 
men trusted themselves to this conveyance. The first 
aerial voyagers were a sheep, a cock, and a duck, who 
were sent up on September 19, and came down safe. 
Human life was not, however, trusted to a balloon till the 



102 



THE FIRST AERONAUTS. 



experiment oi holding the machine with ropes had been 
made. In this manner M. Pilatre de Rozier ascended 
100 feet on the 5th of October, and 324 feet on the 19th, 
in a spheroidal balloon seventy-five feet high. 




De Rozier' s Balloon. 

The first persons who offered to leave the earth entire- 
ly were the Marquis d'Arlandes and M. de Rozier, in a 
Montgolfier^ from the Chateau de la Muette, near Passy, 
November 21, 1783. Their balloon, magnificently dec- 
orated, was terminated below by a circular gallery for 
the aeronauts ; inside a grate was suspended within their 
reach, so that they could, during the voyage, feed the 
fire in it with straw, a supply of which they took with 
them. The sky was loaded with heavy clouds, driven 
about by irregular winds. After a first trial which had 
nearly proved fatal to the aeronauts, the balloon was 
again filled, and a provision of straw taken up to supply 
the fire. The machine first mounted with a steady and 
majestic pace to more than 3000 feet, and traversed the 
Avhole extent of Paris, intercepting the body of the sun, 
and giving to the gazers on the towers of Notre Dame, 



THE FIKST AERONAUTS. 103 

for a few seconds, the spectacle of a total eclipse. When 
the balloon had reached so high that the objects on earth 
were not distinguishable, the Marquis d'Arlandes was 
anxious to descend ; but his companion still kept feeding 
the fire. At last, on hearing some cracks from the top 
of the balloon, and observing holes burning in the sides, 
the marquis became alarmed, and applying w^et sponges 
to stop the progress of the burning, he compelled M. de 
Rozier to desist. As they now descended too fast, M. 
d'Arlandes threw fresh straw on the fire, in order to 
gain such elevation as would enable them to clear the 
lofty buildings ; and after a journey of twenty or twenty- 
five minutes, they safely alighted beyond the Boulevards, 
having described a track of six miles, and the balloon 
being quite empty and flattened. 

The next voyage — the first made in a hydrogen bal- 
loon — was that of MM. Charles and Robert at sunset, on 
December 1, 1783, from the Tuileries. After coming 
down, M. Charles reascended alone, and was soon near- 
ly two miles high : he saw the sun rise again, and he 
says, " I was the only illuminated object, all the rest of 
nature being plunged in shadow." A small balloon, 
launched by Montgolfier just before the ascent, was 
found to have run a totally opposite course, which first 
gave rise to the suspicion of different directions in the 
currents of air at different heights. 

The third voyage — from Lyons, January 19, 1784 — 
was made in the largest Montgolfier yet constructed 
(102 feet diameter, 126 feet high), by seven persons, 
among whom were J. Montgolfier and M. de Rozier. A 
rent in the balloon caused it to descend with great ve- 
locity, but no one was hurt. 

The mania for aerial voyaging soon passed from France 
to Italy; and the Chevalier Paul Andreani constructed 
a spherical balloon about sixty-eight feet diameter, made 
of linen, lined with fine paper, and provided with a hra- 
ziere^ or fireplace. It was inflated in fifteen minutes; 
and on February 25, 1784, the chevalier and two assist- 
ants ascended from Monsucco, near Milan, and after re- 
maining up twenty minutes, returned there in safety. 

Three days previous to the above, February 22, a small 
balloon, launched by itself from Sandwich, crossed the 



104 FIRST BALLOON IN ENGLAND. 

Channel, and was found nine miles from Lisle, having 
traveled above thirty miles an hom\ 

On April 25, 1784, MM. de Morveau and Bertrand 
ascended in a balloon 1300 feet at Dijon, and experi- 
mented with effect with oars. 

On May 20, 1784, M. Montgolfier, two other gentle- 
men, and four ladies, ascended, the balloon being con- 
fined by ropes. 

In September, 1784, the Duke of Orleans (Louis Phi- 
lippe), accompanied by Messrs. Robert, ascended in a 
balloon furnished with oars and rudder ; to this a small 
balloon was attached, for the purpose of being inflated 
with bellows, and thus supplying the means of descent 
without waste of the hydrogen gas. At 1400 feet high 
they encountered a thunder-storm and whirlwind ; by 
throwing out ballast, they rose to 6000 feet, when the 
heat of the sun caused so great an expansion of the gas 
that a rupture in the balloon was feared. The duke 
pierced the silk with his sword in several places, and 
thus kt out the gas ; and having narrowly escaped fall- 
ing into a lake, the aeronauts descended unhurt, after an 
excursion of five hours. 

Hitherto the several balloon experiments had been con- 
fined to the Continent, but now reached our country. 

The first balloon experiment in England was made by 
Count Zambeccari. On November 25, 1783, a balloon 
of oiled silk, richly gilt, and filled with hydrogen gas, 
ascended from the Artillery Ground, Moorfifelds; it was 
found forty-eight miles from London, near Pet worth. 
At the end of the same year, Mr. Sadler sent up a hydro- 
gen balloon from Oxford. About the same time (De- 
cember 25th), Mr. Boulton, the partner of James Watt, 
constructed a balloon, to which a match and serpent 
were attached, that the gas might explode in the air. 
The object was to ascertain whether the reverberation 
of thunder is caused by echo or by successive explosions ; 
but the point remained unsettled, owing to the shouting 
of the people. 

Count Zambeccari may be considered as among the most 
unfortunate of the early voyagers. Li an ascent from 
Ancona, he was driven for many hours over the Adriatic 
Sea, until picked up by a bark ; and in another journey, 



BALLOONING IN SCOTLAND. 



105 



from near Bologna, in his descent, the car, by the upset- 
ting of a lamp and spirit of wine, took fire, and bm^nt the 
clothes of the count and his companion ; the balloon fell 
into the Adriatic, twenty-five miles distant from the Ital- 
ian coast. The half-burnt car sank, but Zambeccari held 
fast by the ropes of the balloon, though immersed in the 
water to his neck. By means of a bit of glass he detach- 
ed a rope from the bag, and with it fastened his body to 
the machine. In this situation he floated on the water 
for some hours, the balloon being still inflated. At length, 
in the evening, the count was taken up by some fisher- 
men, who, in attempting to seize the balloon, cut the 
ropes, when it rose and took its course toward the Turk- 
ish coast. 

In Scotland, the earliest attempts at aerostation em- 
anated from a chemist at Edinburgh, Mr. Scott, who, on 
March 12, 1784, let off from Heriot's Gardens a balloon, 
which was taken up twenty miles from Edinburgh. 
About the same time, various balloons were let off from 
other places in Scotland ; one launched from the Observ- 
atory of Aberdeen went thirty-eight miles in half an hour. 




Tlie first Ascension on Horseback. 

E 2 



106 "the EDINBURGH FIRE-BALLOON.' 

By a singular coincidence, on the above day, Philip 
Astley, the celebrated horse-rider, and founder of the 
Amphitheatre, launched an aerostatic globe (or balloon) 
in St. George's Fields ; it was afterward found at Fa- 
versham, forty-seven miles distant. 

In the same year Mr. J. Tytler, another chemist at Ed- 
inburgh, had constructed a balloon on the Montgolfier 
principle, and exhibited it as " the Edinburgh Fire-bal- 
loon." It was 40 feet high, and 30 feet in diameter. On 
August 27 he ascended with this balloon 350 feet; but, 
as no furnace was taken up with it to maintain the sup- 
ply of heated air, Tytler soon descended, with the triple 
fame of being the first native of Great Britain icho 
achieved an aerial ascent; of having accomplished the 
first aerial voyage in these realms ; and, with one excep- 
tion, the only person who ascended in Great Britain by 
the agency of atmospheric air rarefied by artificial heat. 
Nevertheless, the merit of the first aerial voyage in Great 
Britain was long ascribed to Lunardi, whereas he did not 
ascend till September 15th following. From an admis- 
sion ticket in the British Museum, Tytler's balloon ap- 
pears to have been constructed by M. W. Brodie ; and 
the engraving represents it in the shape of a cask, hoop- 
ed, of varnished linen in eight pieces; the car, provided 
with a pair of wings or sails, being suspended by eight 
large cords. 

The exception above referred to was the ascent of Mr. 
Sneath, in a balloon of his own construction, from Bleak 
Hill, near Mansfield, on the night of May 24, 1837 : after 
being in the air two hours, the balloon descended ; but 
Mr. Sneath, fearing it might be destroyed if he quitted it, 
remained there till aid arrived in the morning. 

On June 4, 1784, Madame Thible, the first female aero- 
naut, and possibly the only woman who has ascended in 
a fire-balloon, did so in a Montgolfier^ from Lyons, in 
company Avith M. Fleuraud, in th^ presence of the court, 
and of Gustavus, King of Sweden, then traveling as Count 
Ilaga. Madame Thible's intrepidity was soon parallel- 
ed ; for in the following year, June 29, 1785, the first En- 
glish female aeronaut, Mrs. Sage, ascended in a balloon. 

TJie first aerial voyage in Er.gland was made by Vin- 
centio Lunardi, accompanied by a cat, a dog, and a pigeon : 



EAELY BALLOON VOYAGES. lOV 

he started from the Artillery Ground, and landed at Stan- 
don, near Ware. 

On January 7, 1785, Messrs. Blanchard and Jefferies 
crossed the English Channel in an inflammable air-bal- 
loon constructed by the former gentleman. They rose 
from near Shakspeare's Cliff, at Dover ; but the weight 
being too great for the power of the balloon, they rapid- 
ly descended. They threw out ballast from time to 
time, but without success ; next they threw out a parcel 
of books, anchors, and cords, but ineffectually ; and as 
the balloon approached the sea, the aeronauts threw away 
their clothes, and, fastening themselves to slings, pre- 
23ared to cut away the boat as a last resource. Calais 
was now distinctly seen at a distance of about four miles 
in the direction of the wind ; and the balloon rising quick- 
ly, they at length descended in safety in the forest of 
GuiShes. 

The longest and most interesting voyage which was 
performed about this time was that of Messrs. Roberts 
and Hullin, from Paris, in a balloon filled with heated air. 
Its diameter was 27f feet, and its length 46f feet, and it 
was made to float with the longest part parallel to the 
horizon, with a boat nearly 17 feet long attached to a- net 
that went over it as far as the middle. To the boat were 
annexed wings, or oars, in the form of an umbrella. At 
12 o'clock they ascended, and descended at 40 minutes 
past 6, near Arras, in Artois. By working the oars they 
accelerated their course ; but the current of air was uni- 
form from the height of 600 to 4200 feet. In their voy- 
age of 150 miles they heard two claps of thunder; the 
thermometer fell from 77° to 59°, and condensed the air 
in the balloon so as to make it descend very low. From 
experiments, they concluded that they were able, by the 
use of the two oars, to deviate from the direction of the 
wind about 22°. 

On June 15, 1785, M. de Rozier and M. Remain ascend- 
ed from Boulogne in a Montgolfier^ with the intention 
of crossing the Channel. This machine was a sort of 
double balloon, one inflated with hydrogen gas ; below it 
was suspended a fire-balloon, and between them were 
sails. In a short time the upper balloon was seen to be 
rapidly expanding, while the aeronauts tried to facilitate 



108 



BALLOONS IN MILITAEY OPERATIONS. 



the escape of the gas. Soon afterward the whole appara- 
tus appeared to be on fire, and the remains of the ma- 
chine descended from the height of three quarters of a 
mile with the mangled bodies of the voyagers. In July 
following Major Money ascended in a balloon of his own 
construction from Norwich, which burst ; he was precip- 
itated into the German Ocean, where he remained five 
hours, clinging to the wreck of the balloon, by the aid of 
which he kept himself floating, till he was picked up by 
the Argus sloop-of-war ofi* the coast of Yarmouth. 




Te3tu-Brissy'a Balloon. 

The ascent of M.Testu from Paris, in June, 1T86, last- 
ed twelve hours. His balloon was furnished with wings 
and other steering apparatus ; and when he had ascend- 
ed 3000 feet, the distention of the balloon led him to de- 
scend in a coni-field in the plain of Montmorenci. His 
balloon was seized by the villagers, when he cut the cords 
and reascended, and was driven about through the night 
by a terrific thunder-storm, but descended at sunrise un- 
injured, seventy miles from Paris. 

About this time attempts were made to render aeros- 



BALLOONS IN MILITARY OPERATIONS. 



109 



tation useful in military operations. A captive balloon 
was held attached to a cord of sufficient length, so that 
a person could ascend to a corresponding height, and ob- 
tain a bird's-eye view of the enemy's movements. The 
most successful result was obtained early in the French 
Revolutionary war, when a balloon, prepared by the 




The French Academy's Balloon. 



Aerostatic Institute in the Polytechnic School, and in- 
trusted to the command of experienced officers, was dis- 
tributed to each of the Republican armies. The deci- 
sive victory which General Jourdan gained in June, 1794, 
over the Austrians at Fleurus, has been ascribed princi- 



110 PERILOUS ASCENTS. 

pally to the accurate information of the enemy's move- 
ments, before and during the battle, communicated by 
telegraphic signals from a balloon sent up to a moderate 
height in the air. The aeronauts, headed by Guyton de 
Morveau, mounted twice in the course of the day, and 
continued about four hours each time hovering in the 
rear of the army, at an altitude of 1300 feet. In the sec- 
ond ascent, the enterprise being discovered by the ene- 
my, a battery was opened against them ; but they soon 
gained an elevation above the reach of the cannon. 

In 1802 Garnerin visited England, and ascended in a 
balloon from Ranelagh Gardens, Chelsea, with a naval of- 
ficer, when they reached Colchester in less than an hour. 
In July and September, Garnerin repeated his ascent ; 
and in the latter month descended in a parachute in safe- 
ty from a height at which he could scarcely be distin- 
guished. 

In 1807 Garnerin made a night ascent, and, rising with 
unusual rapidity, attained a great elevation. By some 
neglect, the apparatus for discharging the gas became 
unmanageable ; the aeronaut was obliged to make an in- 
cision in the balloon, which then descended so rapidly 
that he cast out his ballast. The balloon, in this way, al- 
ternately rose and sank for eight hours ; and the aero- 
naut was driven by a thunder-storm against the mount- 
ains, and landed at Mount Tonnere, 300 miles distant 
from the place of his ascent. 

Among the most perilous ascents on record are those 
of Mr. Sadler from Bristol in 1810, and Dublin in 1812. 
In the latter voyage he was Avafted across the Irish Chan- 
nel, when, on his approach to the Welsh coast, the bal- 
loon descended nearly to the surface of the sea. By this 
time the sun was set, and the shades of evening began to 
close in. He threw out nearly all his ballast, and sud- 
denly sprang upward to a great height; and by so do- 
ing, brought his horizon to clip below the sun, producing 
the whole phenomena of a western sunrise. Subsequent- 
ly, descending in Wales, he of course witnessed a second 
sunset on the same evening (Sir John Herschel's Out- 
lines of Astronomy). Mr. Sadler was long a famous 
aeronaut, and he was one of the earliest manufacturers 
of soda-water. His two sons, John and Windham, were 



COAL-GAS FOR BALLOONS. Ill 

also aeronauts : the latter was killed in 1824 by falling 
from a balloon. 

Before the introduction of gas-lighting, the mode of in- 
flating a balloon with hydrogen gas was by a slow chem- 
ical process from oil of vitriol and water, and sheet zinc, 
zinc filings, or iron filings ; when, the water being de- 
composed, the vitriol causes the zinc or iron to attract 
the oxygen, and form with it an oxyd, while the hydro- 
gen, the other component of water, is liberated. The hy- 
drogen was made in casks, whence it was conveyed by 
hose into the balloon. Coal-gas was first substituted for 
hydrogen in 1821 by Charles Green, who, on the corona- 
tion-day of George IV., ascended from St. James's Park. 
The success of this experiment vastly increased the facil- 
ities and diminished the expenses of balloon ascents. 
This w^as Green's first aerial voyage; he subsequently 
made upward of 500. In 1836 a vast balloon was con- 
structed in Vauxhall Gardens, at the cost of 2000 guin- 
eas. In this balloon Green ascended November 7, in the 
above year, w^ith Mr. Monck Mason and Mr. Holland, and, 
crossing the British Channel, descended in eighteen hours 
at Weilburg in ISTassau. In the same balloon. Green, 
September 10, 1838, with Mr. Rush, reached the greatest 
altitude ever attained — 27,146 feet, or 5 miles 746 feet. 

In 1838 a return was made to the heated-air system: 
there was constructed by subscription of a party of am- 
ateur aeronauts an egg-shaped Montgolfier balloon, the 
height of the York Column, and half the circumference 
of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. The furnace was 
dropped into the centre of the car, and the chimney was 
placed in the lower aperture of the balloon : the heat 
could be raised to 200° Fahr. in three minutes, and the 
bag filled with 170,000 cubic feet in eight minutes. On 
May 24, the balloon having been inflated upon a platform 
in the Surrey Zoological Gardens, an attempt to ascend 
failed from the furnace being too small, when the disap- 
pointed spectators tore the machine into pieces. 

It has been at various times attempted to turn the 
balloon to scientific account, of w^hich efibrts the follow- 
ing are instances : 

De Luc, the celebrated Genevese philosopher, made a scientific 
voyage in a balloon, taking np with him a barometer, which fell at 



112 SCIENTIFIC BALLOON OBSERVATIONS. 

the greatest altitude to 12 inches. Supposing the barometer to have 
stood at that time at 30 inches, it follows from this that he must have 
left below him in quantity exactly three fifths of the entire atmos- 
phere, since 12 inches would be only two fifths of the complete column 
sustained in the barometric tube. His elevation at this moment was 
estimated to have been 20,000 feet; but it is certain that he had not 
attained a point amounting to more than a small fraction of the entire 
altitude of the atmosphere. 

In 1804, MM. Gay-Lussac and Biot ascended at Paris to a height 
of 13,000 feet, provided with apparatus. The same year M. Gay- 
Lussac ascended alone 23,000 feet.* In the latter voyage he con- 
firmed two important points : 1. That the magnetic force experiences 
no sensible variation, either in its inclination or its intensity, from the 
surface of the earth to the greatest height to which it is possible to 
ascend. 2. That in this interval the constitution of the atmosphere is 
entirely the same. M. Gay-Lussac observed that the heat decreased 
nearly in arithmetical progression in proportion as he rose in the at- 
mosphere, and that each degree of the depression of his centrigrade 
thermometer corresponded to an elevation of about 85 toises 5 feet. 

In 1806, Carlo Brioschi (died 1833), astronomer royal at Naples, 
ascended with Andreani, the first Italian aeronaut. Trying to rise 
higher than M. Gay-Lussac had done, they got into an atmosphere so 
rarefied as to burst the balloon. Its remnants checked the velocity of 
their descent, and this, with their falling on an open space, saved 
their lives ; but Brioschi contracted a complaint which brought him to 
his grave. 

On June 17, 1823, Captain Beaufoy, the able meteorological ob- 
server, ascended with Mr. Graham in his balloon, which, at the height 
of 6605 feet, became enveloped in clouds, above which was a vast ex- 
panse of frozen snow, with enormous mountain-like masses, burnished 
at every summit by the rays of the sun, which shone most brilliantly 
from a deep blue sky. The aeronauts rose 11,711 feet, at which height 
they heard the report of a gun, and could distinguish the metropolis. 
At the highest elevation, 19,000 feet, clouds were still visible, and the 
atmosphere was filled with fine crystals of snow : these aeronauts 
found no difficulty in breathing. 

Four ascents were made in 1852 with Mr. Green, in his Nassau 
Balloon, by a Committee of the British Association, which reported to 
the Royal Society the meteorological observations obtained : the air 
collected in the ascents scarcely differed from that at the earth at the 
same time. 

The aerial phenomena witnessed by Mr. E. Vivian, M.A., in a bal- 
loon ascent from the metropolis, were, the altitude of the horizon, 
which remained practically on a level with the eye at an elevation of 
two miles, causing the surface of the earth to appear concave instead 
of convex, and to recede during the rapid ascent, while the horizon 
and the balloon seemed to be stationary: the definite outlines and 
pure coloring of objects directly beneath, although reduced to micro- 

* A like 'elevation has since been attained by MM. Barral and 
Bixio. — Dr. Tjirdner^ 1855. 



^ 



M^Mir:;;l. .,ii"i 





PAEACHUTES. 115 

scopic proportions: the rich combination of rays bursting through 
clouds, and having the sun's disk for their focus, contrasted with 
shadows upon the earth which radiate from a vanishing point on the 
horizon, the narrow shadows of clouds and eminences, such as Harrow 
and Richmond, being projected several miles, as seen in the lunar 
mountains : the magnificent Alpine scenery of the upper surfaces of 
cloud, still illumined at high altitudes by the cold silvery ray, con- 
trasted with the rich hues of clouds at lower levels, and the darkness 
of the earth after sunset. 

In acoustics, several interesting phenomena were noticed. The 
sound of London rolled westward as far aS its smoke, but was lost 
above the clouds, where the most intense silence prevailed, as also 
near the surface of the earth, showing that sound ascends. 

It is now time to mention Parachutes^ expedients by 
which an aeronaut is enabled to lower himself from a 
balloon to the earth. The Parachute resembles a vast 
umbrella, to the handle of which is attached a basket to 
support the aeronaut. When it is first detached from 
the balloon, it is shut up ; but, as it descends, the air 
causes the folds to expand. 

The idea of using a parachute to break the fall is not 
new. Two centuries ago two umbrellas were seen used 
as parachutes in Siam. In France, in 1783, M. le Nor- 
niand used an umbrella as a parachute in jumping from a 
house to the ground. 

Blanchard, in his first ascent from Paris in a hydro- 
gen balloon, March 2, 1784, added wings and a rudder, 
but found them useless ; and he first carried fi parachute^ 
or open umbrella, attached above the car, to break the 
fall, in case it separated from the balloon. 

In October, 1797, M. Garnerin ascended from Paris, 
and when at the height of 2000 feet, disengaged from his 
balloon a parachute, in which he descended : at first the 
motion was slow and steady, then oscillatory, but he 
reached the earth in safety, as related at page 110. 

A most disastrous descent was made July 24, 1837, by 
Mr. Cocking, in a parachute constructed by him, and at- 
tached to Mr. Green's Nassau balloon. The parachute 
resembled an inverted open umbrella ; and when Cocking 
cut the connecting rope from the balloon, the parachute 
collapsed, he descended to the earth with great velocity, 
and was taken up dead, at Lee, near Blackheath, six 
miles from the scene of his ascent. The result had been 
nearly equally fatal to the persons in the car of Green's 



116 STEERING BALLOONS. 

balloon, which shot up so rapidly that the gas was forced 
out, and for nearly five minutes they suffered great pain. 
Most luckily, they had provided a large silken bag full 
of atmospheric air, and furnished with two metal tubes ; 
these they applied to their mouths, and were thus en- 
abled to breathe : without such a precaution, suffocation 
would have been inevitable. 

In September, 1838, Mr. Hampton ascended with a 
parachute, attached to a coal-gas balloon, from Chelten- 
ham, to the height of 9000 feet ; he then cut the con- 
necting cord, when the balloon rose some hundred feet, 
and burst ; Mr. Hampton safely descending in the para- 
chute within thirteen minutes, the collapsed balloon hav- 
ing reached the earth before him. 

We conclude with notices of a few of the more ingen- 
ious varieties of contrivances which have been made for 
navigating the air in the present century. 

In 1843 Mr. Monck Mason proposed to propel balloons 
by the Archimedean Screw, so successfully applied to 
move vessels through water. He accordingly construct- 
ed a large egg-shaped balloon, placed upon a wooden 
frame in the form of a canoe, to the centre of which he 
suspended an oblong car. At the head of this car he 
placed, at the end of an iron axle, a portion of an Ar- 
chimedean Screw ; and at the stern of the car was a large 
oval-shaped rudder, to guide the balloon on either side, 
horizontally. In a model, Mr. Mason set the screw in 
motion by clock-work, which propelled the balloon round 
the room; but he left it to others to devise machinery 
for practical working. 

A still bolder draft upon credulity was presented in 
1843, with all the appliances which the graphic art could 
lend to design. This was the "Aerial Transit Machine," 
patented by a Mr. Henson, and to consist of a car attached 
to a huge rectangular wing-like frame, covered with oiled 
silk, or canvas ; the machine to be propelled by a steam- 
engine in the car, working two vertical fan-wheels with 
oblique vanes ; while a frame, like the tail of a bird, was 
to act as a rudder, and make the apparatus ascend or 
descend. But, as Mr. Henson had not provided for the 
buoyancy of all this machinery, the "Aerial Transit Ma- 
chine" never rose but in the region of the brain of the 
speculative inventor ! 



AERIAL CHARIOTS. 119 

In 1844 there was constructed in Paris, by M. Marey 
Monge, an immense balloon of sheets of copper the 200th 
part of an inch thick, in extent about 1500 yards; the 
sheets were soldered by bands, like the ribs of a melon ; 
the machine weighed 800 pounds, and was to be filled 
with hydrogen gas. M. Monge submitted his project to 
the French Academy. By substituting copper for silk, 
he maintained that the aeronaut might remain in the air 
for any length of time, and thus be enabled to study the 
atmospheric currents ; and by connecting the balloon by 
a metal wire with the earth, Monge expected to conduct 
the electric matter from the clouds, and thus prevent the 
formation of hail, which is so destructive to agriculture. 
However, the project entirely failed. 

In 1850, M. Julien,,a watchmaker of Paris, construct- 
ed a model balloon, in the form of a fish, which floated 
against the wind by clock-work moving a pair of wings. 
The model was of goldbeater's skin, filled with gas, and 
was four yards long. Twenty years previously, Mr. Egg, 
the celebrated gunmaker, constructed in a building erect- 
ed for the purpose, at Knightsbridge Grove, a huge fish- 
shaped balloon of goldbeater's skin, which could not be 
navigated in the. air, although the experiments with the 
model were successful. 

On May 24, 1850, Mr. H. Bell ascended from Kenning- 
ton in an "Aerial Machine," shaped like an elongated 
egg^ which he propelled with a single screw, and steered 
by an apparatus for nearly thirty miles, and descended 
safely at High Laver, Essex. This is one of the few suc- 
cesses of steering. 

In 1850 M. Petin designed at Paris "a System of 
Aerial Navigation," consisting of a vast framework 162 
yards long, holding four balloons, each 90 feet diameter, 
and four parachutes, at two levels, the whole worked by 
two horizontal helices and wheel-work ; the platform for 
several persons.* 

Bishop Wilkins has his followers in our time. In 1827 
Colonel Viney patented a Char Volant^ to be drawn by 

* In 1859 there was constructed at New York an ''Aerial Ship," 
the height of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, and provided with a life- 
boat attached to the car ; the aeronaut, T. S. C. Lowe, projecting to 
cross the Atlantic Ocean in this vast machine. 



120 



AERIAL CHARIOTS. 



Kites, occasionally tandem fashion; and in the Great 
Exhibition of 1851 there was shown a Kite Carriage^ 
which many years previously had been experimented 
with on Durdham Downs, near Bristol. It was impelled 
by the air acting upon large kites, at the rate of twenty 
to twenty-five miles an hour. In 1857 Lord Carlingford 
patented an Aet'ial Chariot^ of very light wood, with 
three wheels, two net-work wings, and a tail, the latter 
worked by " an aerial screw," turned by a winch acting 
on three multiplying wheels : possibly, adds the inventor, 
two eagles may be trained to draw the vehicle, Uke the 
Chariot of Jupiter ! 

The problem to be solved in aerial navigation is to 
move through the air in any desired direction. Until 
this be accomplished, the Balloon will remain a toy to 
amuse a crowd, and not productive of any gain to science. 
The accounts of the ascents made during the last thirty- 
nine years would fill a large volume ; and the details of 
the catastrophes include the deaths of several of the 
aeronauts. 




Bcgnier's Flying Macliine. 




Roger Bacon. From a scarce print hy ^gidius Sadeler. 



THE TEUB HISTOEY OF FEIAR BACON. 



Few of the early workers in science have been so 
strangely misrepresented as Roger Bacon, the philoso- 
pher of the thirteenth century, but, until lately, more 
popularly known as the "Friar Bacon" of the story- 
books, and the legend of the Brazen Head, which he is 
said to have made to speak. Yet he was the author of 
upward of eighty scientific and philosophical treatises, 
and the reputed inventor of gunpowder and of specta- 
cles. Tradition framed his character on the vulgar no- 
tions entertained in his day of the results of experi- 
mental science: he was regarded as a learned monk, 
searching for the philosophers' stone in his laboratory, 
aided only by infernal spirits ; whereas he was the saga- 
cious advocate of reform in education, reading, and reason- 
ing; and, what was equally rare, the real inquirer into 
the phenomena of nature. Bacon died at Oxford in the 
year 1292, where existed, until nearly our own time, a 
traditionary memorial of " the Wonderful Doctor," as he 

F 



122 ROGER BACON AT OXFORD. 

was styled by some of his contemporaries. On Grand- 
pont, or the Old Folly Bridge, at the southern entrance 
into Oxford, stood a building, called " Friar Bacon's 
Folly," from a belief that the philosopher was accustom- 
ed to ascend this building in the night and " study the 
stars." It was entirely demolished in 1778; and the 
bridge, of which Wood says " no record can resolve its 
precise beginning," was taken down in 1825, and rebuilt 
in modern style ; but you have only to look across Christ 
Church Meadow to the pinnacled tower of Merton Col- 
lege to be reminded that this was the earhest home of 
science of a decidedly English school, and that for two 
centuries there was no other foundation, either in Oxford 
or Paris, which could at all come near it in the cultiva- 
tion of the sciences.* 

Roger Bacon belonged to this distinguished founda- 
tion, although there is a doubt whether he was not of 
Brazen-nose College. He was born near Ilchester, in 
Somersetshire, in 1214, the year before the signing of 
Magna Charta. He was educated at Oxford, next stud- 
ied at Paris, and returned to Oxford with a doctor's de- 
gree, which was confirmed by the latter University. He 
next took the vows of a Franciscan in a convent possessed 
by that order at Oxford, from which time, 1240, he close- 
ly studied languages and experimental philosophy. His 
brethren soon grew envious of his success ; the lectures 

* An eloquent writer in the Quarterly Review thus draws the con- 
trast presented by a rapid transition from London to Oxford, such as 
may now be accomplished by railway almost within an hour : ' ' From 
noise, glare, and brilliancy the traveler comes upon a very different 
scene — a mass of towers, pinnacles, and spires, rising in the bosom of 
a valley from groves which hide all buildings but such as are conse- 
crated to some wise and holy purpose. The same river which in the 
metropolis is covered with a forest of masts and ships, here gliding 
quietly through meadows, with scarcely a sail upon it ; dark and an- 
cient edifices clustered together in forms full of richness and beauty, 
yet solid, as if to last for ever — such as become institutions raised, not 
for the vanity of the builder, but for the benefit of coming ages; 
streets, almost avenues, of edifices, which elsewhere would pass for 
palaces, but all of them dedicated to God ; thoughtfulness, repose, and 
gravity in the countenance, and even dress, of their inhabitants ; and, 
to mark the stir and the business of life, instead of the roar of car- 
riages, the sound of hourly bells calling men together to prayer." The 
one is a city in which wealth is created for man ; and the other is one 
in which it lias been lavished, and is still expended, for God. 



ROGER bacon's OPUS MA JUS. 123 

which he gave in the University were prohibited, as well 
as the transmission of any of his writings beyond the 
walls of his convent. The charge made against him 
was that of practicing magic, which was then frequently 
brought against those who studied the sciences, and 
particularly chemistry. Yet, in his tract De Nullitate 
Magice^ Bacon declares that experimental science enables 
us to investigate the practices of magic, not with the in- 
tent of confirming them, but that they may be avoided 
by the philosopher. 

Meanwhile due allowance must be made for the times 
in which Bacon lived. Even his astrology and alchymy 
— those two great blots upon his character, as they are 
usually called — are, when considered by the side of a 
later age, irrational only because unproved, and neither 
impossible nor unworthy of the investigation of a phi- 
losopher in the absence of preceding experiments. Ac- 
cording to Dr. Hutton's laborious inquiries, Bacon ex- 
pended in twenty years' researches, some £2000, a very 
large sum for the time, sdpplied by some of the heads of 
the universities. 

That Bacon was by far the truest philosopher of the 
Middle Ages is now generally admitted. He was fully 
acquainted with the works of Euclid, and he displayed 
great knowledge^in the mixed mathematics. He is said 
also to hav^ understood Greek. 

To Pope Clement IV. we owe the production of Baoon's 
great work, the Opus Majus, Clement had previously 
been legate in England, where he had heard of Bacon's 
discoveries, and earnestly desired to see his writings ; 
but the prohibition of the Franciscans prevented his 
wish being complied with. After his election as head of 
the Church, Bacon, conceiving that there would be no 
danger or impropriety in disobeying his immediate 
superiors at the command of the Pope, wrote to Clement, 
stating that he was now ready to send him whatever he 
wished for. The answer was a repetition of the former 
request, and Bacon accordingly drew up the Opus Majus^ 
of which, it may be presumed, he had the materials 
ready. The book was accordingly sent, but was hardly 
received by Clement before he was seized with his last 
illness. 



124 ROGER BACON S DISCOVERIES. 

Bacon enjoyed freedom from open persecution until 
the year 1278, when, in his sixty-fourth year, he was 
summoned before a council of Franciscans at Paris, who 
condemned his writings, and committed him to close 
confinement ; the particular ground of accusation being 
the charge of innovation, according to some, but, accord- 
ing to others, his ^vi^itings upon astrology. During ten 
years Bacon tried to procure his enlargement, but with- 
out success: at last, however, he w^as set at liberty, 
through the intercession of some powerful nobles with 
the Pope, but who they were is not mentioned. Some 
say that Bacon died in prison ; but the best authorities 
state that he returned to Oxford, where he wrote a com- 
pendium of theology, and died in 1292. He was buried 
in the church of the Franciscans at Oxford. The manu- 
scripts which he had left behind him were immediately 
put under lock and key by the magic-fearing survivors 
of his order, until the documents are said to have been 
eaten by insects. 

Mr. Hallam considers it hard'to determine whether or 
not Roger Bacon is entitled to the honors of a discoverer 
in science. The two great points by which he is known 
are his reputed acquaintance with Gunpowder and the 
Telescope. In his Opics Majus^ some detonating mixture, 
of w^hich saltpetre is an ingredient, is spoken of as com- 
monly known ; and in his De Seeretis Oj^yeribics^ he ex- 
pressly mentions sulphur, charcoal, and saltpetre as in- 
gredients. But, independently of the claims of the 
Chinese and Indians, Marcus Graecus, who is mentioned 
by an Arabic physician of the ninth century, gives the 
recipe for gunpowder. The discovery has sometimes 
been given to Schwartz, the German monk ; and the date 
1320 annexed to it, which is much posterior to that 
claimed for Bacon. 

Bacon's discovery of Optic Lenses has been established 
beyond a doubt ; and he conceived the Telescope, though 
there is no proof that he carried his conception into 
practice, or invented the instrument. He truly describes 
a telescope; but if he had constructed one, he would 
have found that there are impediments to the indefinite 
increase of the magnifying power, and, still more, that 
a boy does not appear a giant, although he attributes 



ROGER bacon's DISCOVERIES. 125 

these properties to the telescope. At the same time, 
Bacon asserted that a small army could be made to ap- 
pear very large ; and that the sun and moon could be 
made to descend, to all appearance, down below, and 
stand over the head of the enemy — ideas which, in. after 
times, produced either the telescope or some modification 
of it, consisting in the magnifying of images produced 
by reflection, and that before the date either of Jansen 
or Galileo. 

Whether the invention of Spectacles is due to Bacon, 
or whether they had been introduced just before he 
wrote, is doubtful. In his Opus Majus he writes : " This 
instrument, a plano-convex glass, or large segment of a 
sphere, is useful to old men, and to those who have weak 
eyes, for they may see the smallest letters sufficiently 
magnified ;" whence we may conclude that the particular 
way of assisting decayed sight was known to him. The 
invention is commonly attributed to Alexander de Spina, 
a monk of Pisa, who died in 1313. Friar Jordan de 
Rivalto tells his audience, in a sermon published in 1305, 
that " it is not twenty years since the art of making 
spectacles was found out," thus placing the invention in 
1285, seven years before Bacon's death. Among other 
inventions attributed to him is that of the introduction 
of the Arabic numerals into England; but this has been 
completely disproved. 

"The mind of Roger Bacon," says Hallam, "was 
strangely compounded of almost prophetic gleams of the 
future course of science, and the best principles of the 
inductive philosophy, with a more than sacred credulity 
in the superstitions of his own time. Some have deemed 
him overrated by the nationality of the English. But, if 
we may have sometimes given him credit for the dis- 
coveries to which he had only borne testimony, there can 
be no doubt of the originality of his genius." He bears 
a singular resemblance to Lord Bacon, not only in the 
character of his philosophy, but in several coincidences 
of expression ; and the latter has even been charged with 
having borrowed much from Roger Bacon, without hav- 
ing acknowledged his obligations. 

There is little reason to suppose that Roger Bacon's 
writings were read much out of his own University. But 



126 



"bacon's folly." 



to those who Avill study them, there is, even at this clay, 
a combination of simplicity of style and independence of 
thought altogether unusual in his time. His Ojncs Majus 
contains books on the necessity of advancing knowledge ; 
on the use of j)hilosophy in theology ; on the utility of 
grammar and mathematics: in the latter of which he 
runs through the various sciences of astronomy, chronol- 
ogy, geography, and music. The work also includes a 
treatise on optics and experimental philosophy, besides 
discussions upon the connection and causes of phenomena 
— all treated in a manner greatly in advance of the learn- 
ing of the thirteenth century — the dark age in which the 
wisdom of Roger Bacon was as a light hidden beneath 
a bushel measure. 




^'' Bacon's Folly," Grandijont, Oxford. 



THE DISCOYERIES OF LEONAEDO DA 
VINCI. 

Vinci has been well characterized as " one of the most 
accomplished men of an accomplished age, and for the 
extent of his knowledge in the arts and sciences *yet nn- 
rivaled." Although he devoted himself enthusiastically 
to paintmg, he appears to have found time also to study 
sculpture, architecture, engineering, and mechanics gen- 
erally ; botany, anatomy, mathematics, and astronomy ; 
and he was not only a student of these branches of knowl- 
edge, but a master. 

" None of the writings of Leonardo," says Hallam, 
" were published till more than a century after his death ; 
and, indeed, the most remarkable of them are still in 
manuscript. As Leonardo was born in 1452, we may 
presume his mind to have been in full expansion before 
1500. His Treatise on Painting is known as a very ear- 
ly disquisition on the rules of art. But his greatest lit- 
erary distinction is derived from those short fragments 
of his unpublished writings that appeared not many years 
since, and which, according at least to our estimate of the 
age in which he lived, are more like revelations of phys- 
ical truth vouchsafed to a single mind than the super- 
structure of its reasoning upon any established basis. 
The discoveries which made Galileo, and Kepler, and" 
Msestlin, and Maurolycus, and Castelli, and other names 
illustrious ; the system of Copernicus ; the very theories 
of recent geologists, are anticipated by Da Vinci within 
the compass of a few pages ; not, perhaps, in the most 
precise language, or on the most conclusive reasoning, 
but so as to strike us with something like the awe of pre- 
ternatural knowledge. In an age of so much dogmatism, 
he first laid down the grand principle of Bacon, that ex- 
periment and observation must be the guides to just the- 
ory in the investigation of nature. If any other doubt 
could be harbored, not as to the right of Leonardo da 



128 DISCOVERIES OF LEONARDO DA VINCI. 

Vinci to stand as the first name of the fifteenth century, 
which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so 
many discoveries, which probably no one man, especially 
in such circumstances, has ever made, it must be an hy- 
pothesis, not very untenable, that some parts of physical 
science had already attained a height which mere books 
do not record. The extraordinary works of ecclesiastical 
architecture in the Middle Ages, especially in the fifteenth 
century, lend some countenance to this opinion. Leo- 
nardo himself speaks of the Earth's Annual Motion, in a 
treatise that appears to have been written about 1510, as 
the opinion of many philosophers in his age." 

Mr. Hallam adds, in a note, " The manuscripts of Leo- 
nardo da Vinci, now at Paris, are the justification of 
what has been said in the text." Our historian then 
quotes from a short account of the MSS. by Venturi, 
published at Paris in 1797, a few extracts, whence w^e 
select the following : 

In Mechanics, Vinci was acquainted with, among other 
things, 1. The theory of applied forces obliquely to the 
power of the lever. 2. The respective resistance of beams. 

3. The laws of friction, afterward given by Amontons. 

4. The influence of the centre of gravity upon bodies at 
rest and in motion. 5. In optics, he described the Cam- 
era Obscura before Porta ; he also taught aerial perspect- 
ive, the nature of colored shadows, the movements of the 
iris, the efiects of the duration of visible impressions, and 
many other phenomena of the eye which are not to be 
found in Vitellio. Lastly, Vinci stated all that Castelli, 
in an age after him, produced ujDon the motion of water, 
and thus gained the reputation of having been the first 
who applied the new doctrine of motion to hydraulics, 
on which subject he was long considered as the earliest 
writer of the experimental school. 

Leonardo must therefore be placed at the head of the 
writers on the physico-mathematical sciences, and of the 
true method of study by the moderns. The first extract 
Venturi gives is entitled " On the descent of heavy bod- 
ies, combined with the rotation of the earth." He here 
assumes the latter, and conceives that a body falling to 
the earth from the top of a tower would have a com- 
pound motion in consequence of the terrestrial rotation. 



DISCOVERIES OF LEONARDO DA VINCI. 129 

Venturi thinks that the writings of Nicolas de Cusa had 
set men speculating concerning this before the time of 
Copernicus. 

Vinci had very extraordinary lights as to mechanical 
motions. He says plainly that the time of descent on in- 
cUned planes of equal height is as their length ; that a 
body descends along the arc of a circle sooner than down 
the chord ; and that a body descending on an inclined 
plane will reascend with the same velocity as if it had 
fallen down the height. He frequently repeats that ev- 
ery body weighs in the direction of its movement, and 
Aveighs the more in the ratio of its velocity ; by weight 
evidently meaning what we call force. He applies this 
to the centrifugal force of bodies in rotation : '^ Pendant 
tout ce temps elle pese sur la direction de sa mouvement." 
Mr. Hallam then quotes another passage, and adds, that 
if it be not as luminously expressed as we should find it 
in the best modern books, it seems to contain the philo- 
sophical theory of motion as unequivocally as any of 
them. 

Leonardo had a better notion of Geology than most of 
his contemporaries, and saw that the sea had covered the 
mountains which contained shells. He seems also to 
have had an idea of the elevation of the Continents, 
though he gives an unintelligible reason for it. 

He explained the obscure light of the unilluminated 
part of the Moon by the reflection of the Earth, as Msest- 
lin did long after him. 

Vinci understood Fortification well, and wrote upon it. 
" Since, in our time," he says, " artillery has four times 
the power it used to have, it is necessary that the forti- 
fication of towns should be strengthened in the same pro- 
portion." He was employed on several great works of 
engineering. So wonderful was the variety of power in 
this miracle of nature.* 

* Hallam's Introduction to the Literature of Europe^ fifth edition, 
vol. i., p. 222-225. The MSS., after Venturi had inspected them, 
were returned to Milan, where they are still preserved. It is said that 
Napoleon I. carried these and Petrarch's Virgil to his hotel himself, 
not allowing anyone to touch them, exclaiming with delight, *'Que?- 
ti sono miei" ("These are mine"). When they were in the hands of 
Count Galeazzo Areonauti, James I. of England is said to have offer- 
ed him 3000 Spanish doubloons for them (nearly £10,000) ; but this 

F 2 



130 INSTRUMENTS OF WAR. 

His acquirements are told in his own words, in a letter 
to Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, when he offered him 
his services : " Most illustrious Signor, — Having seen and 
sufficiently considered the specimens of authors who re- 
pute themselves inventors and makers of Instruments of 
War, and found them nothing out of the common way, 
I am willing, without derogating from the merit of an- 
other, to explain to your excellency the secrets which I 
possess ; and I hope at fit opportunities to be able to 
give proof of my efficiency in all the following matters, 
which I will now only briefly mention : 

"1. I have means of making bridges extremely light and portable, 
both for the pursuit of, or the retreat from, an enemy ; and others 
that shall be veiy strong and fire-proof, and easy to fix or take up 
again. And I have means to burn and destroy those of the enemy. 

2. In case of a siege, I can remove the water from the ditches; 
make scaling-ladders and all other necessary instruments for such an 
expedition. 

3. If, through the height of the fortifications, or the strength of 
the position of any place, it can not be effectually bombarded, I have 
a means of destroying any such fortress, provided it be not built upon 
stone. 

4. I can also make bombs most convenient and portable, which 
shall cause a great confusion and loss to the enemy. 

5. I can arrive at any (place ?) by means of excavations and crook- 
ed and narrow ways without any noise, even where it is required to pass 
under ditches or a river. 

6. I can also construct covered wagons, which shall be proof 
against any force ; and, entering into the midst of the enemy, will 
break any number of men, and make way for the infantry to follow 
without any hurt or impediment. 

7. I can also, if necessary, make bombs, mortars, or field-pieces 
of beautiful and useful shapes quite out of the common method. 

8. If bombs can not be brought to bear, I can make crossbows, 
balistse, and other most efficient instruments ; indeed, I can construct 
fit machines of offense for any emergency whatever. 

9. For naval operations, I can also constnict many instruments 
both of offense and defense ; I can make vessels that shall be bomb- 
proof. 

10. In times of peace, I think I can, as well as any other, make 
designs of buildings for public or for private purposes ; I can also con- 
vey water from one place to another. 

I will also undertake any work in Sculpture — in marble, in bronze, 
or in terra cotta ; likewise in Painting, I can do what can be done as 
well as any man, be he who he may. 

patriotic nobleman refused the money, and presented them to the Am- 
brosian Library. 



LEONARDO DA VINCI. 131 

I can execute the bronze horses to be erected to the memory and 
glory of your illustrious father, and the renowned house of Sforza. 

And if some of the above things should appear to any one imprac- 
ticable and impossible, I am prepared to make experiments in your 
park, or any other place in which it may please your excellency, to 
whom I most humbly recommend myself, etc." 

There is no date to this letter ; it was probably writ- 
ten about 1483, or perhaps earlier. The duke took 
Leonardo into his service. Why he chose to leave 
Florence is not known; he had made several proposi- 
tions for the improvement of the city and the state, 
which were not listened to : one of his projects was to 
convert the River Arno, from Florence to Pisa, into a 
canal. 

To the above may be added the evidence, discovered 
in 1841 among Da Vinci's manuscripts, of his knowledge 
of steam power applied to warfare^ accompanied by pen 
and ink sketches of the apparatus of a " steam gun," 
which he designates the Architonnere, a machine of fine 
copper, which throws balls with a loud report and great 
force. One third of the instrument contains a charcoal 
fire, to heat the water, which being done, a screw at the 
top of the vessel must be made quite tight. All the 
water will then escape below into the heated portion of 
the instrument, and be immediately converted into a 
vapor so abundant and powerful that the machine will 
carry a ball a talent in weight. This invention Leonardo 
attributes to Archimedes. 



THE STOEY OF PAEACELSUS. 

This audacious Swiss charlatan and daring innovator 
was bprn at the close of the fifteenth, and died in the 
middle of the sixteenth century. His family was noble, 
though poor, and he was early initiated into the secrets 
of Astrology and Alchymy by his father, a physician, 
and by the Abbe Tritheim. He passed his youth in 
visiting mines, curing diseases, foretelling the future, 
and seeking the Philosophers' Stone. During a journey 
in Poland he was made prisoner by the Tartars, from 
whom he is said to have learned some arcana of Alchymy. 
He then went to Egypt, where he was initiated into 
farther mysteries. Thus equipped, he wandered through 
Europe, figuring among the doctors, astrologers, and 
quacks ; picking up stray secrets from old women, gip- 
sies, magicians, and headsmen. A peripatetic philoso- 
pher, not a book-worm, he read but little : he was never 
regularly educated, and had a horror of languages, inso- 
much that at one time he did not open a book for ten 
years together. But he talked and listened to all classes, 
and amassed a strange medley of knowledge, which he 
poured forth in his lectures with amazing facility. Al- 
chymy at this period was fast falling into discredit, when 
Paracelsus undertook to revive and rehabilitate the 
study : his enthusiasm, his eloquence, and his audacity 
produced an impression, created a public for him, and 
therefore ruined him through his vanity. 

In 1526 he returned to Switzerland. A lucky and 
striking cure fixed on him public attention, and led to his 
being appointed Professor of Physic and Surgery at 
Basle. He set himself in opposition against all tradi- 
tions, declaring himself the rival of all doctors, past and 
present. His audience had no means of criticism. They 
took him at his own valuation ; and the delighted stu- 
dents so thoroughly entered into his polemic against the 
schools, that they burned the writings of Hippocrates, 



DISCOVERIES OF PARACELSUS. 133 

Galen, Avicenna, and Averroes, in the very court of the 
University. He lectured to students in his and their 
native language, instead of in the barbarous style and 
Latinity then universal. Some lucky cures confirmed 
his reputation ; his failures, as usual in such cases, were 
passed over. Princes consulted and enriched him ; pro- 
fessors corresponded with him. But Paracelsus reigned 
only a short time. Success ruined him : hitherto he had 
lived temperately, but now he took to drinking and de- 
bauchery. Success had raised him enemies, who drove 
him at last from his professorship ; and he once more 
resumed the profession of a wandering empiric. In a 
few years he died, at the conclusion of a debauch, struck 
by apoplexy, in his forty-eighth year. 

As a medical reformer, Paracelsus propounded a phys- 
iology which was novel, and in those days striking. The 
leading idea was an application of Astrology to Phys- 
iology. In the stars he placed the organ of the vital 
force. The Sun acts upon the heart and abdomen, the 
Moon upon the brain, Jupiter on the head and the liver, 
Saturn on the spleen. Mercury on the lungs, Venus on 
the loins, etc. Man, being a compound of body and 
spirit, can only act upon his spiritual part by means be- 
yond the ordinary terrestrial phenomena. Dreams will 
reveal medicines; but the culmination of the medical art 
is in Magic; by it not only can life be restored, but 
health prolonged indefinitely; yet this boasted possessor 
of the Philosophers' Stone and the Elixir of Life died in 
poverty, at an early age. 

Nevertheless, Paracelsus had genius enough to make 
posterity forget his errors and absurdities, as a glance at 
his discoveries will show. To him w^e owe the idea of 
employing poisons as medicines ; for he knew that, phys- 
iologically, there was a profound difference between a 
large dose and a moderate dose of the same substance. 
He also made known to Europe various preparations of 
antimony, mercury, iron, etc. He employed preparations 
of lead for diseases of the skin, and first used copper, ar- 
senic, and sulphuric acid as medicaments. He knew that 
when oil of vitriol acts upon a metal there is an air dis- 
engaged, which air is a constituent of water. He knew, 
moreover, that air is indispensable to the respiration of 



134 CURES BY PARACELSUS. 

animals and the combination of bodies ; that is to say, he 
was on the threshold of the modern doctrine of combus- 
tion. Farther, he knew that digestion was a dissolution 
of the aliments, that putrefaction was only transforma- 
tion, and that all which Hves dies only to resuscitate un- 
der another form. He maintained that the virus of small- 
pox is a ferment, and that the fever which accompanies 
eruptions is a sort of boiling which separates the impure 
from the pure elements of the blood. By a bold gen- 
eralization, he placed man at the head of the animal 
series, asserting that his organization was closely allied 
to that of animals, a position on w^hich rests the whole 
science of Comparative Anatomy.* 

" The vaunts of Paracelsus of the power of his chem- 
ical remedies and ehxirs, and his open condemnation of 
the ancient pharmacy, backed as they were by many sur- 
prising cures, convinced all rational physicians that chem- 
istry could furnish many excellent remedies, unknown till 
that time ; and a number of valuable experiments began 
to be made by physicians and chemists desirous of dis- 
covering and describing new chemical remedies. The 
chemical and metallurgic arts, exercised by persons em- 
pirically acquainted with their secrets, began to be seri- 
ously studied, with a view to the acquisition of rational 
and useful knowledge."! 

The original discoveries of Paracelsus, Brande consid- 
ers to have been few and unimportant : his great merit 
lies in the boldness and audacity which he displayed in 
introducing chemical preparations into the Materia Med- 
ica^ and in subduing the prejudices of the Galenical phy- 
sicians against the productions of the laboratory. But, 
though we can fix upon no particular discovery on which 
to found his merits as a chemist, and though his writings 
are deficient in the acumen and knowledge displayed by 
several of his contemporaries and immediate successors, 
it is undeniable that he gave a most important turn to 
pharmaceutical chemistry ; and calomel, with a variety 
of mercurial and antimonial preparations, as likewise 
opium, thenceforth came into general use. 

* Condensed (with interpolations) from a paper on Etudes Biogra- 
))!iiques, par P. A. Cap, in the Saturday Review^ No. 100. 
t Sir John ITcrschcrs Disc. Nat. Phil., p. 112. 



CUBES BY PARACELSUS. 135 

Paracelsus performed most of his cures by mercury 
and opium, the use of which latter drug he had learned 
from Turkey. The physicians of his time were afraid of 
opium, as being "cold in the fourth degree." Tartar 
was likewise a great favorite of Paracelsus, who imposed 
on it that name "because it contains the water, the salt, 
the oil, and the acid, which burn the patient as hell 
does ;" in short, a kind of counterbalance to his opium. 

Mr. Hallam, in taking leave of the absurd and men- 
dacious paradoxes of Paracelsus, sagely observes : " Lit- 
erature is a garden of weeds as well as flowers, and Para- 
celsus forms a link in the history of opinion which should 
not be overlooked." 

If he found hundreds of admirers during his life, he 
obtained thousands after his death. A sect of Paracel- 
sists sprang up in France and Germany to perpetuate 
the extravagant doctrines of their founder upon all the 
sciences, and alchymy in particular. 




John Napier, of Merchiston. From a rare print by Delaram. 

NAPIER'S SECEET INVENTIONS. 

Few of the results of speculative science have been so 
soundly appreciated as the invention of Logarithms, by 
John Napier, early in the seventeenth century. His in- 
genious and contriving mind did not, however, rest sat- 
isfied with these pursuits ; for a paper with his signature, 
which is preserved in the Library at Lambeth Palace, 
asserts him to be the author of certain " Secret Inven- 
tions, profitable and necessary in these days for the de- 
fense of this island, and withstanding of strangers, ene- 
mies to God's truth and religion." Of these, the first is 
stated to be " a Burning Mirror for burning ships by the 
sun's beams," of which Napier professes himself able to 
give to the world the "invention, proof, and perfect dem- 
onstration, geometrical and algebraical, with an evident 
demonstration of their error who affirm this to be made 
a parabolic section." The second is a Mirror for pro- 
ducing the same efiect by the beams of a material fire. 
The third is a piece of Artillery, contrived so as to send 



Napier's secret inventions. 137 

forth its shot, not in a single straight line, but in all di- 
rections, in such a manner as to destroy every thing in 
its neighborhood. Of this the writer asserts he can give 
" the invention and visible demonstration." The fourth 
and last of these formidable machines is described to be 
" a round Chariot in Metal," constructed so as both to 
secure the complete safety of those within it, and, mov- 
ing about in all directions, to break the enemy's array 
"by continual charges of shot of the arquebuse through 
small holes." " These inventions," the paper concludes, 
" besides devices of sailing under water, and divers other 
devices and stratagems for harassing the enemies, by the 
grace of God and work of expert craftsmen, I hope to 
perform. John Napier of Merchiston, anno dom. 1596, 
June 2." 

From this date it appears that Napier's head had been 
occupied with the contrivances here spoken of long be- 
fore he made himself known through those scientific la- 
bors by which he is now chiefly remembered. Some of 
his announcements are so marvelous as to lead us to sup- 
pose that he intended in this paper rather to state what 
he conceived to be possible than what he had himself 
actually performed. Yet several of his expressions will 
not bear this interpretation, and others confirm what he 
asserts as to his having really constructed some of the 
machines he speaks of. Thus Sir Thomas Urquhart, in 
a strange work. The Jewels first published in 1652, evi- 
dently alludes to the third invention as "an almost in- 
comprehensible device ;" adding, " it is this : he had the 
skill (as is commonly reported) to frame an engine (for 
invention not much imlike that of Archytas's dove) 
which, by virtue of some secret springs, inward resorts, 
with other implements and materials fit for the purpose, 
inclosed within the bowels thereof, had the power to 
clear a field of four miles in circumference of all the liv- 
ing creatures exceeding a foot of height that should be 
found thereon, how near soever they might be to one 
another ; by which means he made it appear that he was 
able, with the help of this machine alone, to kill 30,000 
Turks without the hazard of one Christian. Of this, it 
is said, upon a wager, he gave proof upon a large plain 
in Scotland, to the destruction of a great many heads of 



138 

cattle and flocks of sheep, whereof some were distant 
from others half a mile on all sides, and some a whole 
mile." Little faith is attached to this statement, that 
Napier actually put the power of his machine to the 
proof; but, taken in conjunction with Napier's own ac- 
count, it seems to prove that he had imagined some such 
contrivance, and even that his having done so was mat- 
ter of general notoriety in his own day, and some time 
after. It should be added, that although Sir Thomas 
Urquhart was born in 1613, some years before Napier's 
death. The Jeiml was not published until 1652, some years 
after the reputed inventor's decease. Urquhart informs 
us that Napier, when requested on his death-bed to re- 
veal the secret of this engine for destroying cattle, sheep, 
and Turks, refused to do so, on the score of there being 
too many instruments of mischief in the world already 
for it to be the business of any good man to add to their 
number.* 

An able writer in the Philosophical Magazine^ vol. 
xviii., has collected several notices of achievements simi- 
lar to those which the Scotch mathematician is asserted 
to have performed. In regard to the mirror for setting 
objects on fire at a great distance by the reflected rays 
of the sun, he adduces the well-known story of the de- 
struction of the fleet of Marcellus, at Syracuse, by the 
burning-glasses of Archimedes : and the other (not so 
often noticed), which the historian Zonaras records, of 
Proclus having consumed by a similar apparatus the ships 
of the Scythian leader Vitalian, Avhen he besieged Con- 
stantinople in the beginning of the sixth century. Ma- 
laba, another old chronicler, however, says that Proclus 
operated on this occasion, not by burning-glasses, but by 
burning sulphur showered upon the ships from machines. 
The possibility of the mirror-burning feat was long dis- 
believed; but Buffbn, in 1747, by means of 400 plane 
mirrors, actually melted lead and tin at a distance of fifty 
yards, and set fire to wood at a still greater, and this in 
March and April. With summer heat it was calculated 
that the same effects might have been produced at 400 

* There is a common report among the people at Gartness that 
this machine is buried in the ground near the site of the old castle 
said to have been occupied by Napier. 



Napier's "logarithms." 139 

yards' distance, or more than ten times that to which, in 
all probability, Archimedes had to send his reflected 
rays. " It may be concluded, therefore, that there is 
nothing absolutely incredible in the account Naj)ier 
gives of his first invention."* 

N^apier's second announcement is, however, more 
startling: he professes to have fired gunpowder by a 
single mirror; but the only record of the kind we 
possess is of gunpowder being lighted by heat from 
charcoal collected by one concave, and reflected from 
another. Napier's fourth invention, the chariot, bears 
some resemblance to one of the famous Marquis of 
Worcester's contrivances. Sailing under water, the ob- 
ject of Napier's last invention, was performed in his 
own day by the Dutch chemist Debrell, who is reported 
to have constructed a vessel for King James I., which he 
rowed under the water of the Thames. It carried twelve 
rowers, besides several passengers ; the air breathed by 
whom, it is said, was made again respirable by means 
of a certain liquor, the composition of which Boyle 
asserts that he learned from the only person to whom it 
had been divulged by Debrell. 

Another scheme of the inventor of Logarithms is the 
manuring of land with salt, as inferred from the follow- 
ing notice in BirrelPs Diary, Oct. 23, 1598 : " Ane proc- 
laiAation of the Laird of Merkistoun, that he tuik upon 
hand to make the land muir profitable nor it wes before, 
be the sawing of salt upon it." The patent, or gift of 
office, as it is called, for this discovery, was granted upon 
condition that the patentee should publish his method in 
print, which he did, under the title of The new Order 
of Gooding and Manuring all sorts of Field-land with 
common Salt. This tract is now probably lost ; but the 
above facts establish Napier's claim to an agricultural 
improvement which has been revived in our day, and 
considered of great value, while it proves that Napier 
directed his speculations occasionally to the improve- 
ment of the arts of common life, as well as to that of the 
abstract sciences. 

Reverting to the Logarithms, we may observe that 
among the persons who had the merit of first apprecia- • 
* Pursuit of Knowledge, etc., vol. ii., p. Gl. 



140 Napier's "logarithms." 

ting the value of Napier's invention was the learned 
Henry Briggs, reader of the Astronomy Lectures in 
Gresham College, who was "so surprised with admira- 
tion of them (the Logarithms) that he could have no 
quietness in himself until he had seen the noble person, 
the Lord Marchiston, whose only invention they were. 
When they met, almost one quarter of an hour was spent 
in each beholding the other, almost with admiration, be- 
fore one word was spoke. At last Mr. Briggs began : 
' My lord, I have imdertaken this long journey purposely 
to see your person, and to know by what engine of wit 
or ingenuity you came first to think of this most excel- 
lent help into astronomy, viz., the Logarithms ; but, my 
lord, being by you found out, I wonder nobody else found 
it out before, when now known it is so easy.' " 

Before his invention of Logarithms, Napier devised a 
method of performing multiplication and division by 
means of small rods, having the digits inscribed upon 
them according to such an arrangement, that Avhen 
placed alongside of each other in the manner directed — 
in order, for instance, to multiply any two lines of figures 
— the several lines of the product presented themselves, 
and had only to be transcribed and added up to give 
the proper result. These rods, or bones, are thus alluded 
to by Butler in his Hudibras^ where he recounts the 
" ruminaging of Sidrophel :" 

*' A moon-dial, with Napier's hones.^'' 
A set of the bones used by Napier is preserved in his 
family. Sir Walter Scott, in his Fortunes of Nigel^ 
makes Davie Ramsay swear by " the bones of the im- 
mortal Napier," the novelist having an indistinct re- 
membrance of what these " bones" were. 



LOED BACON'S ^^NEW PHILOSOPHY." 

The claim of this wonderful man to rank as a dis- 
coverer in science will scarcely be allowed by those who 
question the title of his predecessor, and, in some re- 
spects, prototype, Roger Bacon, to that distinguished 
honor. Nevertheless, Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, " by 
his hours of leisure, by time hardly missed from the la- 
borious study and practice of the law, and from the as- 
siduities of a courtier's life," became the father of modern 
science, and will be justly looked upon in all future ages 
as the great reformer of philosophy. His own actual 
contributions to the stock of physical truths were small ; 
and his observations and experiments in physical science, 
viewed beside the results obtained by his immediate suc- 
cessors, do not appear to great advantage ; nor can we 
compare them at all with the brilliant discoveries of his 
contemporary, Galileo. It is only when viewed in refer- 
ence to the general state of knowledge in his own times 
that Bacon's recorded experiments and observations can 
be fairly estimated. To glance at these characteristics 
of his philosophic mind, and at the effect of his labors, 
rather than detail the labors themselves, is all that can 
here be attempted. 

Francis Bacon was born in York House, on the south 
side of the Strand, in 1 56 1 . His health was very delicate ; 
and to this circumstance may be partly attributed that 
gravity of carriage, and that love of sedentary pursuits, 
which distinguished him from other boys. We are told 
that while still a mere child he stole away from his play- 
fellows to a vault in St. James's Fields for the purpose 
of investigating the cause of a singular echo which he 
had observed there. It is certain that at only twelve 
years of age he busied himself with very ingenious spec- 
ulations on the art of legerdemain ; a subject which, as 
Professor Dugald Stewart has most justly observed, 
merits much more attention from philosophers than it 
has ever received. 



142 THE NOVUM OKGANUM. 

In his thirteenth year Bacon was sent to Trinity Col- 
lege, Cambridge, where he studied with diligence and 
success. Dr. Rawley, his chaplain and biographer, re- 
lates that " while he was commorant at the University, 
about sixteen years of age (as his lordship hath been 
pleased to impart unto myself), he first fell into the dis- 
like of the philosophy of Aristotle — not for the worth- 
lessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe 
all high attributes, but for the untruthfulness of the way 
— ^being a philosophy (as his lordship used to say) only 
strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the 
production of works for the life of man ; in which mind 
he continued to his dying day." Thus early Bacon is 
said to have planned that great intellectual revolution 
with which his name is inseparably connected. 

In his great work on the Instanration of the Sciences^ 
he first made a survey of knowledge as it then existed. 
In its second part, the Novum Organum^ in the first 
book, the main object of science is pointed out, its true 
end being "to enrich human life with new discoveries 
and wealth." In the second book. Bacon explains the 
mode of studying nature which he proposed for the ad- 
vancement of science. The last division includes the use 
of instnmients in aiding the senses, in subjecting objects 
to alteration for the purpose of observmg them better, 
and in the production of that alliance of knowledge and 
power which has in our day crowded every part of civ- 
ilized life with the most useful inventions. The great 
merit of Bacon undoubtedly consists in the systematic 
method which he laid down for prosecuting philosophical 
investigation ; and at the present day, those especially 
who busy themselves with physical pursuits would often 
do well to recur to the severe and rigorous principles 
of the Organmn, Experience and observation are the 
guides through the Baconian philosophy, by which its 
author so largely contributed to the existing knowledge 
in matters of fact. Of his far-seeing anticipation we 
quote an instance. Bacon, after remarking that every 
change and every motion requires time, has the follow- 
ing very curious anticipation of facts which appeared 
then doubtful, but which subsequent discovery has as- 
certained : 



THE INDUCTIVE PHILOSOPHY. 143 

# 
The consideration of these things produced in me a doubt alto- 
gether astonishing, namely, whether the face of the serene and starry 
heavens be seen at the instant it really exists, or not till some time 
later ; and whether there be not with respect to the heavenly bodies a 
true time and an apparent time, no less than a true place and an ap- 
parent place, as astronomers say, on account of parallax. For it 
seems incredible that the species or rays of the celestial bodies can 
pass through the immense interval between them and us in an in- 
stant, or that they do not even require some considerable portion of 
time. 

" The measurement of the velocity of light," Professor 
Playfair subjoins, " and the wonderful consequences aris- 
ing from it, are the best commentaries on this passage, 
and the highest eulogy on its author." 

It must not be forgotten how much is due for the 
foundation of the Royal Society to Lord Bacon, who 
died only thirty-six years before its incorporation. In 
his Novum Organmn^ rejecting syllogism as a mere in- 
strument of disputation, and putting no trust in the hy- 
pothetical system of ancient philosophy, he recommends 
the more slow but satisfactory method of induction, which 
subjects natural objects to the test of observation and 
experience, and subdues nature by experiment and in- 
quiry ; and " it will be seen how rigidly the early Fel- 
lows of the Royal Society followed Bacon's advice." It 
is, however, in his JSTew Atlaiitis that we have the plan 
of such an institution more distinctly set forth; and 
Sprat considered that there should have been no other 
preface to his account of the Royal Society than some 
of Bacon's writings. 

After the glory of Bacon had set forever, and his name 
had become tarnished with infamy, he was stripped of 
his offices, banished from the court, heavily fined, and 
imprisoned ; but then, discharged and his sentence com- 
muted, his ruined fortunes were never repaired ; and the 
record of his frauds, deceits, impostures, bribes, corrup- 
tions, and other malpractices, is one of the blackest pages 
in history. He passed the remainder of his days in the 
society of the few friends whom adversity had left him. 
Scientific pursuits were his consolation, and at last caused 
his death. The father of experimental philosophy was 
the martyr of an experiment. It had occurred to him 
that snow niiglit be used with advantage for the purpose 



144 LORD bacon's death. 

m 

of preventing animal substances from putrefying. On a 
very cold day, early in the spring of the year 1626, he 
alighted from his coach near Highgate in order to try 
the experiment. He went into a cottage, bought a fowl, 
and with his own hands stuifed it with snow. While 
thus engaged he felt a sudden chill, and was soon so 
much indisposed that it was impossible for him to return 
to Gray's Inn. The Earl of Arundel, with whom he was 
well acquainted, had a house at Highgate. To that house 
Bacon w^as carried. The earl was absent ; but the serv- 
ants who were in charge of the place showed great re- 
spect and attention to the illustrious guest. Here, after 
an illness of about a week, he expired, early on the morn- 
ing of Easter Day, 1626. His mind appears to have re- 
tained its strength and liveliness to the end. He did not 
forget the fowl which had caused his death. In the last 
letter that he ever wrote, with fingers Avhich, as he said, 
could not steadily hold a pen, he did not omit to mention 
that the experiment of the snow had succeeded " excel- 
lently well." In this letter Bacon calls himself the 
" martyr of science," and compares himself to Pliny the 
elder, whose death was caused by his over-zealous ob- 
servation of Vesuvius. 

In his will. Lord Bacon " expressed, with singular brev- 
ity, energy, dignity, and pathos, a mournful conscious- 
ness that his actions had not been such as to entitle him 
to the esteem of those under whose observation his life 
liad been passed, and, at the same time, a proud confi- 
dence that his writings had secured for him a high and 
permanent place among the benefactors of mankind. So 
at least we understand those striking words Avhich have 
been often quoted, but which we must quote once more : 
'For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charita- 
ble speeches, and to foreign nations and to the next age.' 

"His confidence was just. From the day of his death 
his fame has been constantly and steadily progressing ; 
and we have no doubt that his name will be named with 
reverence to the latest ages, and to the remotest ends of 
the civilized world." 

The great practical value of the benefits which have 
resulted from the Baconian philosophy has been thus elo- 
quently illustrated by Lord Macaulay : 



THE BACONIAN PHILOSOPHY. 145 

Ask a follower of Bacon what the New Philosophy, as it was called 
in the reign of Charles II., has effected for mankind, and his answer 
is ready: ^^It has lengthened life; it has mitigated pain; it has ex- 
tinguished diseases ; it has increased the fertility of the soil ; it has 
given new securities to the mariner ; it has furnished new arms to the 
warrior; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries with bridges of 
form unknown to our fathers ; it has guided the thunderbolt innocu- 
ously from heaven to earth ; it has lighted up the night with the 
splendor of the day ; it has extended the range of human vision ; it 
has r lultiplied the power of human muscles ; it has accelerated mo- 
tion ; it has annihilated distance ; it has facilitated intercourse, cor- 
respondence, all friendly offices, all dispatch of business ; it has en- 
abled man to descend to the depths of the sea, to soar into the air, to 
penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth, to traverse 
the land in cars which whirl along without horses, and the ocean in 
ships which run ten knots an hour against the wind. These are but 
a part of its fruits, and of its first-fruits ; for it is a philosophy which 
never rests, which has never attained, which is never perfect. Its law 
is progress. A point which yesterday was invisible is its goal to-day, 
and will be its starting-post to-morrow." 

The same brilliant writer denominates the two leading 
principles of the Baconian philosophy to be utility and 
progress^ of which there can not be more direct evidence 
than in the fact that the writings of Lord Bacon have 
been more extensively read in England during the last 
forty years than in the two hundred years which pre- 
ceded. 

G 



INVENTIONS OF PEINCE EUPEET. 

This ill-starred soldier of fortune, born in 1619, and 
nephew of King Charles I., was a man of distinguished 
talent and bravery, but lacked " the better part of valor" 
— discretion. His checkered fortunes are prominent in 
the records of the Civil Wars ; and we have here to 
glance at his later life, Avhen the impetuosity of the sol- 
dier had subsided into the calmness of the philosopher ; 
and it is to the prince's peculiar readiness for the change 
of employment and pursuits that we trace the peaceable 
close of his busy life. 

After his reconciliation with Charles II., Rupert took 
up his residence with the Elector of Mentz ; and here, 
says Mr. Eliot Warburton, in the first leisure of his man- 
hood, his mind reverted with a sense of luxury to the 
philosophical pursuits in which even his youth had taken 
pleasure. He now found new sources of unexhausted 
interest in the forge, the laboratory, and the . painter's 
studio. 

It was during this lull in the stormy life of Rupert that 
he discovered or improved upon his art of Mezzotinto. 
So long ago as 1637, when immured in the castle of Lintz, 
he had exercised his active genius in some etchings that 
still remain, and bear that date. He w^as long said to 
have discovered the art of Engraving in Mezzotinto, 
stated to have been suggested to him by observing a sol- 
dier one morning rubbing off from the barrel of his mus- 
ket the rust which it had contracted by being exposed 
to the night-dew. The prince perceived, on examination, 
that the dew had left on the surface of the steel a collec- 
tion of very minute holes, so as to form the resemblance 
of a dark engraving, parts of which had been here and 
there already rubbed away by the soldier. He immedi- 
ately conceived the idea that it would be practicable to 
find a way of covering a plate of copper in the same man- 
ner with little holes, which, being inked, and laid upon 



INVENTIOJS'S OF PRINCE EUPEET. 147 

paper, would undoubtedly produce a black impression ; 
while by scraping away in different degrees such parts 
of the surface as might be required, the paper would be 
left white where there were no holes. Pursuing this 
thought, he at last, after a variety of experiments, invent- 
ed a kind of steel roller, covered with points, or salient 
teeth, which, being pressed against the copper plate, in- 
dented it in the manner he wished ; and then the rough- 
ness thus occasioned had only to be scraped down, where 
necessary, in order to produce any gradation of shade 
that might be desired. This anecdote obtained curren- 
cy from its being related by Lord Orford, in his famous 
work upon the Arts, as well as from the avidity with 
which origins of the arts are commonly set down as the 
results of accident. 

The discovery of Mezzotinto has likewise been claimed 
for Sir Christopher Wren ; but his communication to the 
Royal Society upon the subject is of date four years sub- 
sequent to the date of the earliest of the mezzotinto plates 
engraved by Prince Rupert. 

The real inventor of this art was Louis von Siegen, a 
lieutenant colonel in the service of the Landgrave of 
Hesse Cassel, from whom Prince Rupert learned the se- 
cret when in Holland, and brought it Avith him to En- 
gland, when he came over a second time in the suite of 
Charles H. Some curious and very rare prints, purchased 
on the Continent, and now deposited in the British Mu- 
seum, place the claims of Von Siegen beyond doubt. Li 
this collection is a ]3ortrait of the Princess Amelia Eliza- 
beth of Hesse, dated 1643, which \^ fifteen years anterior 
to the earliest of Prince Rupert's dates : there is another 
portrait of the same date ; and another by Von Siegen 
bears the most conclusive evidence of its having been 
produced in the very infancy of the art ; besides which 
is the fact that Von Siegen frequently attached the words 
^'-primus inventor'''^ to his plates. There are also works 
by Furstenburg, dated 1656. 

Prince Rupert's plates, however, evince a more ma- 
tured knowledge of the power of Mezzotinto than those 
of its inventor. Von Siegen ; and Rupert by himself, or 
with the assistance of Wallerant Vaillaint, an artist whom 
he retained in his suite, is thought to have unproved the 



148 PKINCE S METAL. 

mechaDical mode of laying the mezzotinto ground ; but 
this observation does not apply to the principle of the art. 

The prince was, in the fullest sense, a working invent- 
or : he labored heartily at his OAvn forge, and applied 
himself to the practical as well as the theoretical details 
of science. The writer of his funeral ode describes him 
as forging " the thunderbolts of war his hands so well 
could throw." The Transactions of the Royal Society 
record his mode of fabricating a gunpowder of ten times 
the ordinary strength at that time used ; likewise a mode 
of blowing up rocks in mines, or under w^ater ; " an in- 
strument to cast platforms into perspective ;" an hydraul- 
ic engine ; a mode of making hail-shot ; and an improve- 
ment in the naval quadrant. Among his mechanical la- 
bors are also to be reckoned his improvement in the locks 
of fire-arms, and his guns for discharging several bullets 
very rapidly. Among his chemical discoveries was the 
composition now called Prince's Metal, of which candle- 
sticks and small kitchen pestles and mortars are made: 
this is an alloy of copper and zinc, which contains more 
copper than brass does, and is prepared by adding this 
metal to the alloy. To the list of the prince's inventions 
must be added a mode of rendering black-lead fusible, 
and rechanging it into its original state. To him also 
has been attributed the toy that bears his name as '' Ru- 
pert's Drop," that curious bubble of glass which has long 
amused children and puzzled philosophers. 

The i^rince also discovered a method of boring guns, 
which was afterward carried into executien in Romney 
Marsh by a speculator ; but some secret contrivance of 
annealing the metal w^as not understood except by Ru- 
pert, and the matter died with him. His mode of tem- 
pering the Kirby fish-hooks was among his lesser dis- 
coveries. 

Nor must Rupert's pursuits in Glass-making be for- 
gotten. The prince had at Chelsea an experimental 
glass-house, which adjoined Chelsea College ; for we find 
by the Council Minutes of the Royal Society that the 
college and lands "might have been well disposed of 
(before 1682) but for the annoyance of Prince Rupert's 
glass-house, which adjoined it." Sir Jonas Moore wrote 
to the prince, at the request of the council, urging him to 




PRINOE RUPEKT'S LaBOEATORY IN WINDSOR CaSTLB : ViSIT OP CHARLES II. 



Rupert's residence in Windsor castle. 151 

" consider the Society, on account of the mischief that 
his glass-house was doing to the college" (Weld's His- 
tory of the JRoyal Society^ vol. i., p. 279). 

After the Restoration Rupert was received with honor 
by the king ; and Mr. Warburton tells us that the prince 
" established a seclusion for himself in the high tower in 
Windsor Castle,* which he soon furnished after his own 
peculiar taste. In one set of apartments forges, labora- 
tory instruments, retorts, and crucibles, with all sorts of 
metals, fluids, and crude ores, lay strewed around in the 
luxurious confusion of a bachelor's domain; in other 
rooms, armor and arms of all sorts, from that which had 
blunted the Damascus blade of the Holy War to those 
which had lately clashed at Marston Moor and Naseby. 
In another was a library stored with strange books, a 
list of which may still be seen in the Harleian Iliscel- 
lany^^ 

* Rupert's residence in Windsor Castle, of which Charles II. ap- 
pointed him governor, was in the keep or round tower. 



^^ PEINCE EUPERT'S DROPS." 

These philosophical toys, to which we have just allud- 
ed, take their English name from having been first made 
known in England by Prince Rupert, and not from his 
having invented them, as commonly supposed. 

Their origin has been much disputed. Beckmann con- 
siders it more than probable that these Drops, and the 
singular property which they possess, have been known 
from time immemorial. All glass, when suddenly cool- 
ed, becomes brittle, and breaks on the least scratch. On 
this account, as far back as the history of the art can be 
traced, a cooling furnace was always constructed close to 
the fusing furnace. A drop of fused glass falling into 
water might easily have given rise to the invention of 
these Drops ; at any rate, this might have been the case 
in rubbing off what is called the navel — that piece of 
glass which remains adhering to the pipe when any ar- 
ticle has been blown, and which the workman must rub 
off 

It is, however, certain that these Drops were not 
known to experimental philosophers before the middle 
of the seventeenth century. Monconys, who traveled in 
the yeaiil656, was present when some experiments were 
made at Paris before a learned society, which assembled 
at the house of Mommor, the well-known patron of Gas- 
sendi ; and in the same year he saw similar experiments 
made by several scientific persons in London. Beck- 
mann then shows it to be probable that these Drops 
were sent to Paris from Stockholm by Chanut, who was 
then French embassador at the Swedish court. About 
fifteen years before, that is, in 1641, the first glass-houses 
were established in Sweden, and in all probability by- 
Germans ; and it is possible that when the blowing of 
glass was first seen, glass drops may have excited atten- 
tion, which they had not met with in Germany, where 
glass-houses had been long estabhshed. It can never- 
theless be proved that the Drops were known to the 



"prince rupeet's drops." 153 

German glass-blowers much earlier. In 1695, Schulen- 
burg, of the Cathedral school of Bremen, published a 
German dissertation on glass drops and their properties, 
in which he says that he was informed by glass-blowers 
worthy of credit that these Drops had been made more 
than seventy years before at the Mecklenburg glass- 
houses — that is to say, about the year 1625. 

Professor Reyher, of Kiel, states that Henry Sievers, 
teacher of mathematics at Hamburg, had assured him 
that such glass drops were given to his father by a glass- 
maker so early as the year 1637; and that his father 
had exhibited them in a company of friends, who were 
much astonished at their effects. Reyher adds that he 
himself had seen at Ley den, in 1656, the first of these 
glass drops which had been made at Amsterdam, where 
he afterward purchased some of the same kind ; but in 
1666 he procured for a trifling sum a great many of them 
from the glass-houses in the neighborhood of Kiel. It is 
worthy of remark, that Huet, who paid considerable 
attention to the history of inventions, says that the first 
glass drops, which he had seen also in the society held at 
the house of Mommor, were brought to France from 
Germany. According, however, to Anthony le Grand 
{Historia Naturalis^ 1680), they came from Prussia. 
The French call these " glass tears" larmes JBataviques^ 
from the statement of the first being made in Holland.; 
but we incline to think that as the Drops w^ere the result 
of a common operation in glass-houses, their property 
may have been as commonly known among glass-makers, 
but not so early observed by philosophers. 

The drops were first brought to England in 1660, and 
in the proceedings of the Royal Society occurs this entry : 

Aug. 14. Sir Robert Moray brought in glass drops, an account of 
which was ordered to be registered. 

Accordingly, the first volume of the register book con- 
tains a very long account of them and their manufacture. 
They were so well known when Hudibras was written 
as to be used by Butler in popular illustration. In part 
ii., canto 2, we have, 

*' Honor is like that glassy bubble 
That finds philosophers such trouble ; 
G2 



154 "prince Rupert's drops." 

Whose least part crack'd, the whole does fly, 
And wits are crack'd to find out why." 

The Drop appears to have been first brought from the 
Continent by Prince Rupert, and hence associated with 
his name. M. Rohalt, in his Physics^ calls the Drop a 
kind of miracle in nature, and says : 

"Ed. Clarke lately discovered and brought it hither 
from Holland, and which has traveled through all the 
universities in Europe, where it has raised the curiosity 
and confounded the reason of the greatest part of the 
philosophers." 

He accounts for it as follows: "The Drop, when 
taken hot from the fire, is suddenly immersed in some 
appropriate liquor (cold water, he thinks, will break it*), 
by which means the pores on the outside are closed, and 
the substance of the glass condensed ; Avhile the inside 
not cooling so fast, the pores are left wider and wider 
from the surface to the middle, so that the air, being let 
in, and finding no passage, bursts it to pieces. To prove 
the truth of this explication, he observes, that if you 
break off the very point of it the drop will not burst, 
because that part being very slender it was cooled all at 
once, the pores were equally closed, and there is no 
passage for the air into the wider pores below. If you 
heat the drop again in the fire, and let it cool gradually, 
the outer pores will be opened, and made as large as the 
inner ; and then, in whatever part you break it, there 
will be no bursting. He gave three of the drops to three 
several jewelers, to be drilled or filed; but when they 
had worked them a little way — that is, beyond the pores 
which were closed — they all burst to powder." 

The Drop is thus described in the Pliilosopliical Trans- 
actions^ vol. xlvi., p. 175 : 

" The bubble is in form somewhat pear-shaped, or like 
a leech ; it is formed by dropping highly-refined green 
glass, when melted, into cold water. Its end is so hard 
that it can scarcely be broken on an anvil ; but if the 
smallest particle of its taper end is broken off, the whole 
flies at once into atoms and disappears. The theory of 
this phenomenon is, that its particles, when in fusion, 
are in a state of repulsion ; but on being dropped into 
* Here he is mistaken. 



"prince eupert's drops." 155 

the water its superficies is annealed, and the particles re- 
turn into the power of each other's attraction, the inner 
particles, still in a state of repulsion, being confined with- 
in their outward covering." 

Though simple in structure, these Drops are difiicult 
to make. They may be purchased of philosophical in- 
strument makers, and at a few toy-shops ; but we re- 
member Rupert's Drops, or "hand-crackers," as they 
were called, common at fairs, as well as " candle-bombs" 
(a little water in glass hermetically sealed), which are 
mentioned by Hook in his Micrographia^ 1665, but were 
known in Germany before that date. 



SIE SAMUEL MOELAND AND HIS 
INVENTIONS. 

Among the records of the ingenious men of the seven- 
teenth century, the Hfe of Sir Samuel Morland is entitled 
to special regard, for the glimpses which his mechanical 
inventions afford us of the science of the period, as well 
as for the circumstances of his checkered career. 

Samuel Morland was born in Berkshire about the year 
1625. He received his education at Winchester School 
and Cambridge ; he remained at the University ten years, 
but never took a degree. Soon after leaving college he 
was sent on the famous embassy to the Queen of Sweden, 
in company with Whitelocke, who, in his journal, calls 
him " a very civil man, and an excellent scholar." On his 
return Morland became assistant to Thurloe, the secre- 
tary of Oliver Cromwell ; and he is said to have been 
privy to Sir Richard Willis's plot against King Charles, 
which he overheard while feigning sleep in Thurloe's 
chambers in Lincoln's Inn, and which he divulged to the 
king, who made him a knight, and soon afterward a bar- 
onet. Morland had already shown his genius for me- 
chanical science ; and on the Restoration, Charles made 
him Master of Mechanics to his majesty. In 1677 he 
took a house at Vauxhall, where he formed a large col- 
lection of mechanical contrivances. Morland subsequent- 
ly removed to a house near the Thames, at Hammersmith, 
where he died in 1695, having spent his last three years 
very wretchedly. Poverty and loss of sight compelled 
him to rely, almost solely, upon the charity of Archbishop 
Tenison. 

John Evelyn, in his Diary ^ describes, 25th of October, 
1695, his visit with the archbishop to Morland, "who 
was entirely blind — a very mortifying sight." Evelyn 
says : " He showed us his invention of writing, which 
was very ingenious ; also his wooden calendar, which in- 
structed him all by feehng ; and other pretty and useful 



THE SPEAKING TRUMPET. 157 

inventions of mills, pumps, etc. ; and the pump he had 
erected, that serves water to his garden, and to passen- 
gers, with an inscription, and brings from a filthy part 
of the Thames near it a most perfect and pure water." 

The inscription to which Evelyn refers was a stone 
tablet fixed in the wall, and is still preserved. The fol- 
lowing is a copy of it : " Sir Samuel Morland's Well, the^ 
use of which he freely gives to all persons ; hoping that 
none who shall come after him will adventure to incur 
God's displeasure by denying a cup of cold water (pro- 
vided at another's cost, and not their own) to either neigh- 
bor, stranger, passenger, or poor thirsty beggar. July 
8, r695." 

Morland, shortly before his death, as a penance for his 
past life, buried in the ground, six feet deep, £200 worth 
of music-books, being, as he said, love-songs and vanity. 

From some correspondence between Morland and Dr. 
John Pell, preserved in the British Museum, it appears 
that Sir Samuel, as early as 1666, had intended to pub- 
lish a work on the quadrature of the curvilineai*' spaces, 
and had actually printed two sheets of the work, when, 
by the advice of Dr. Pell, he laid it aside. About this 
time also Morland invented his Arithmetical Machine, 
which he describes in a small work. Its operations are 
conducted by means of dial-plates and small indices, mov- 
able with a steel pin. By these means the four funda- 
mental rules of arithmetic are very readily worked, and, 
to use the author's own words, " without charging the 
memory, disturbing the mind, or exposing the operations 
to any uncertainty." His " Perpetual Almanac" is given 
at the end, which was often printed separately. 

We are indebted to Morland for the Speaking Trum- 
pet in its present form. The ancient contrivances of this 
kind resembled hearing rather than speaking trumpets. 
Some have considered the great horn, described in an 
old manuscript in the Vatican Library as having been 
used by Alexander the Great to assemble his army, to be 
the oldest speaking trumpet on record ; but the descrip- 
tion does not expressly state that Alexander spohe through 
the horn. 

Sir Samuel's claim to the credit of the invention is 
warmly contested by Athanasius Kircher. Morland, in 



158 morland's '' quench-fires." 

1671, describes his invention in a pamphlet of eight pa- 
ges. He first made a trumpet of glass in 1670, by which 
he was heard siDcaking at a very considerable distance, 
when it considerably multipUed the voice. The next he 
made was of brass, about 4 J feet long, 1 2 inches in diameter 
at the large end, and only 2 inches at the small end ; to 
Avhich was afiixed a mouth-piece, "made somewhat after 
the manner of bellows," to move with the mouth, and 
thereby prevent the escape of the breath. This was 
tried in St. James's Park, and rendered the voice audible 
at a distance of near half a mile. The third instrument 
was of copper, recurved in the form of a common trum- 
pet; its total length was 16 feet 8 inches, the large end 
19 inches, and the small end 2 inches in diameter: with 
this the voice was heard about a mile and a half. Mor- 
land made other trumpets : with one of the largest, tried 
at Deal Castle, the voice was conducted a distance of be- 
tween two and three miles over the sea. He very ex- 
cusably exaggerated the " manifold uses" of his instru- 
ment, and even said that it might be imj)roved so as to 
carry the voice for the distance of ten miles! Kircher 
asserted that he had published the description of a 
speaking trumpet several years before Morland's pamphlet 
appeared; but his invention more resembles a hearing 
trumpet, and he does not appear to have tried a proper 
speaking trumpet till about 1673. There is one of Sir 
Samuel's original trumpets preserved in Trinity College 
Library, Cambridge, about six feet long, in bad condition. 
In an advertisement of 1671, it is stated that Morland's 
"tubes" were sold by Moses Pitt, a bookseller in St. 
Paul's Church-yard, at the price of £2 5s. The invention 
excited much general interest at the time, so Butler makes 
Hudibras say, 

*'I heard a formidable voice, 
Loud as the Stentophonic noise.'* 

Morland was long claimed to be the inventor of the fire- 
engine; but, as early as 1590, Cyprian Lucar described 
a rude fire-engine, precisely like a huge squirt. Evelyn 
also mentions a fire-engine, invented by Greatorix in 1656, 
ten years before he saw the " quench-fires," as Morland's 
engines were called.* 

* Morland's invention reminds us that in the vestry of the church 



MOBLAND AND STEAM. 159 

The principal objects of Sir Samuel's study were wa- 
ter-engines, pumps, etc., which he carried to high perfec- 
tion: his pumps brought water from Blackmore Park, 
near Winkfield, to the top of Windsor Castle. There is 
in the Harleian Collection of MSS., in the British Muse- 
um, a short tract on the steam-engine, in which " the 
Principles of the New Force of Fire," invented by Mor- 
land in 1682, are thus explained: 

" Water being converted into vapor by the force of 
fire, these vapors shortly require a larger space (about 
2000 times) than the water before occupied, and, rather 
than be constantly confined, would split a cannon ; but, 
being duly regulated, according to the rules of status, 
and by science reduced to measure, weight, and balance, 
then they bear their load peacefully (like good horses), 
and thus become of great use to mankind, particularly 
for raising water, according to the following table, which 
shows the number of pounds that may be raised 1800 
times per hour to a height of six inches by cylinders half 
filled with water, as well as the different diameters and 
depths of the said cylinders." 

Then follows his table of the effects of different-sized 
cylinders. This indicates a perfect knowledge of the 
subject ; and, to Morland's great credit also, let it not be 
forgotten that he has correctly stated the increase of vol- 
ume that water occupies in a state of vapor, which must 
have been the result of experiment : his researches, how- 
ever, seem to have had little influence on the progress of 
the practical application of steam. 

In one of his letters to Archbishop Tenison, dated 28th 
of July, 1688, and preserved in Lambeth Palace, it ap- 
pears that Morland then had an intention of publishing 
the first six books of Euclid, for the use of public schools. 

Morland is said to have written a Treatise on the Ba- 
rometer : he is also said to have invented the capstan to 
heave up anchors ; but he must have been rather the im- 
prover than the inventor of that machine. 

Morland's house at Vauxhall was built upon the site 

of St. Dionis Backchurch, Fenchurch Street, are preserved four large 
syringes, at one time the only engines used in London for the extinc- 
tion of fires : they are about 2 feet 2 inches long, and v/ere attached 
by straps to the bodies of the firemen. 



160 MORLAND AND VAUXHALL GARDENS. 

of Vauxhall Gardens, which appear to have benefited 
from his inventive genius. Aubrey tells us that Sir Sam- 
uel " built a fine room at Vaux-hall, anno 1667, the inside 
all of Looking-glass, and Fountains very pleasant to be- 
hold, which is much visited by Strangers ; it stands in 
the middle of the Garden." In 1675 he obtained a lease 
of Vauxhall House; and about the year 1794 there w^as 
removed from the premises a lead pump inscribed S. M., 
1694. The room mentioned by Aubrey is believed to 
have stood where the orchestra was afterward built ; and 
it was probably erected by Morland for the entertain- 
ment of Charles II., when he visited this place with his 
ladies. The gardens were planted with trees, and laid 
out in walks for Sir Samuel, as we see them in a plan of 
1681. Their embellishments have, from the earliest date 
to our time, consisted of whimsical proofs of skill in me- 
chanics, such as Morland indulged in. The rococo or- 
chestra, which was only removed on the clearance of the 
Gardens in the autumn of 1859, had plastic ornaments of 
a composition resembling plaster of Paris, but known 
only to the architect who designed it. The model pic- 
tures in the Gardens, too, had their mechanism, as arti- 
ficial cascades, a water-mill, and a bridge with a mail- 
coach and a Greenwich long-stage passing over ; an ani- 
mated cottage scene, with figures drinking and smoking 
by machinery, were in existence in 1820 ; and bushes and 
subterranean musical sounds were among the attractions 
— all partaking of Morland's taste, which in the present 
day is termed jyolytechnic ; so that the King's Mcister of 
Mechanics may have originally set the fashion of the cu- 
riosities of Vauxhall Gardens, which existed a century 
and a half after Morland's death. 




Edward, Marquis of Worcester. From the family picture by Yandyck. 



THE MARQUIS OF WORCESTER'S ^^ CENTU- 
RY OF INVENTIONS," 

As the tourist passes by the right of the Abergavenny 
or great road from Monmouthshire into Wales, he will 
scarcely fail to notice the picturesque remains of Raglan 
Castle, " the most perfect decorated strong-hold of which 
this country can boast — a romance in stone and lime." 
Its historic interest can be traced through five centuries ; 
but its culminating point was during the time of Henry, 
fifth Earl and first Marquis of Worcester, who, in his 
eighty-sixth year, made here a desperate struggle in 
favor of King Charles I., Raglan being the last castle 
throughout this broad realm which defied the power of 
Cromwell. In 1642 the marquis raised and supported 
an army of 1500 foot and near 500 horse soldiers, which 
he placed under the command of his son, Lord Herbert, 
who, succeeding his father, became better known as the 
Marquis of Worcester, who left in manuscript the Cen- 



162 TUE MAKQUIS OF AVOKCESTER S 

tury of Inventions, Diiring the civil commotions Charles 
made several visits to Raglan, and on these occasions 
particularly distinguished the young Lord Herbert, whom 
his majesty subsequently invested with the command of 
a large body of troops. His bravery and devotedness 
to the royal cause led to his being commissioned by the 
king in Ireland, failing in which the marquis embarked 
for France. Meanwhile Raglan was surrendered to the 
Parliamentary forces : we do not hear of the young mar- 
quis until 1654, when we find him attached to the suite 
of Charles H., who then resided at the court of France ; 
and in the following year he was dispatched by the exiled 
monarch to London for the purpose of procuring private 
intelligence and supplies of money, of which the king was 
in the greatest need. Worcester was, however, speedily 
discovered, and committed a close prisoner in the Tower, 
where he remained in captivity for several years : he was 
set free at the Restoration. Of his lordship's private 
life we find few records. He probably found leisure for 
the scientific pursuits to which he was much attached 
during his sojourn in France, where he wrote the first 
manuscript of his Century of Inventions^ the notes of 
which he appears to have lost ; but he rewrote them, it 
is said after his committal to the Tower. This we infer 
from the manuscript now in the possession of the Beau- 
fort family, which opens thus : 

''A 

CENTURY 

OF THE 

NAMES AND SCANTLINGS 

OF BTJCH 

INVENTIONS 
As at present I can call to mind to have tried and perfected ; which 
(my former notes being lost) I have, at the instance of a powerful 
friend, endeavored now, in the year 1655, to set these down in such a 
way as may sufficiently instruct me to put iany of them in practice. 
Artis et Naturce proles,'''' 

At the period of the usurpation, "Worcester House, in 
the Strand,* the London residence of the marquis, was 
sold by Parliament ; but at the Restoration it reverted 
to his lordship, who leased the house to the great Lord 

* Afterward called Beaufort House, upon the site of the present 
Beaufort Buildings. 



"century of inventioks." 163 

Clarendon, who resided here until the erection of his 
new house at the top of St. James's Street. 

In 1663 appeared the first edition of the marquis's 
Century of Inventions y' and on April 3, in the same year, 
a bill was brought into Parliament for granting to Wor- 
cester and his successors the whole of the profits that 
might arise from the use of an engine described in the 
last article in the Century. Lord Orford describes this 
bill to have passed on the simple affirmation of the dis- 
covery that he (the marquis) had made ; but the journals 
of the Lords and Commons for 1663-4 show there were 
no less than seven meetings of committees on the subject, 
composed of some of the most learned men in the House, 
who, after considerable amendments, finally passed the 
bill on the 12th of May. 

There is anecdotic evidence of at least the latter por- 
tion of the Century being written by the author while 
confined in the Tower. It is said that he was preparing 
some food in his apartment, when the cover of the vessel, 
having been closely fitted, was, by the expansion of the 
steam, suddenly forced ofi*, and driven up the chimney. 
This circumstance, attracting the marquis's attention, led 
him to a train of thought which terminated in the com- 
pletion of the above invention, which he denominated a 
" Water-commanding Engine." 

Lord Worcester's engine was shown in operation; 
and when Cosmo de' Medici, Grand-Duke of Tuscany, 
visited England in 1656 (at which time the marquis was 
a close prisoner in the Tower), his invention was exhib- 
ited at Lambeth, as thus recorded in the Grand-Duke's 
Diary : 

His Highness went *• beyond the Palace of the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury to see an hydraulic machine, invented by my Lord Somerset, 
Marquis of Worcester. It raises water more than forty geometrical 
feet by the power of one man only, and in a very short space of time 
will draw up four vessels of water through a tube or channel not more 
than a span in width." 

Precisely four years after the bill was brought into 
Parliament for securing the above invention, viz., upon 
April 3, 1667, the marquis died in retirement near Lon- 
don, and his remains were conveyed with funeral solem- 
nity to the vault of the Beaufort family in Raglan Church. 



164 < 

Worcester has been illiberally described as a " fantas- 
tic projector," and his Century^ as " an amazing piece of 
folly." But Mr. Partington, in his edition of the work 
published in 1825, has, throughout an able series of notes, 
fully demonstrated not only the practicability of applying 
the major part of the hundred inventions there described, 
but the absolute application of many of them, though 
under other names, to some of the most useful purposes 
of life. It is surely injustice and ingratitude to apply 
the name of a "fantastic projector" to the man who first 
discovered a mode of applying steam as a mechanical 
agent — an invention alone sufficient to immortalize the 
age in which he lived. 

Many of Worcester's contrivances have since been 
brought into general use: among them may especially 
be mentioned stenography, telegraphs, floating baths, 
speaking statues, carriages from which horses can be 
disengaged if unruly, combination locks, secret escutch- 
eons for locks, candle-moulds, etc. 

We have not space to do more than quote the table 
of the Inventions, which will convey some idea of their 
great variety : 

No. No. 

1. Seals abundantly signifi- 10. How to be fastened from 
cant. aloof and under water. 

2. Private and particular to 11. How to prevent both, 
each o-svner. 12. An unsinkable ship. 

3. A one-line cipher. 13. False-destroying decks. 

4. Reduced to a point. 14. Multiplied strength in little 
6. Varied significantly to all room. 

the twenty-four letters. 15. A boat driving against wind 

6. A mute and perfect dis- and tide. 

course by colors. 16. A sea-sailing fort. 

7. To hold the same by night. 17. A pleasant floating garden. 

8. To level cannons by night. 18. An hour-glass fountain. 

9. A ship-destroying engine. 19. A coach-saving engine. 

* The second edition of the Century was published in 1746 ; the 
third in 1767; the fourth, which may be considered as the best edi- 
tion, is a reprint from the first, and is furnished with an Appendix, 
*' containing an Historical Account of the Fire-engine for raising 
Water." It is dated Kyo, near Lancaster, June 18, 1778. The fifth 
is a reprint from the Glasgow copy, " by W. Bailey, Proprietor of the 
Speaking Figure, now showing, by permission of the Right Hon. the 
Lord Mayor, at No. 41, within Bishopsgate, " 1786. The sixth edi- 
tion was confined to 100 copies, and dated London, 1813. 



'A CENTURY OF INVENTIONS/ 



165 



No. 

20. A balance water-work. 

21. A bucket-fountain. 

22. An ebbing and flowing 
river. 

23. An ebbing and flowing 
castle clock. 

24. A strength - increasing 
spring. 

25. A double-drawing engine 
for weights. 

26. A to-and-fro lever. 

27. A most easy level draught. 

28. A portable bridge. 

29. A movable fortification. 
80. A rising bulwark. 

31. An approaching blind. 

32. A universal character. 

33. A needle alphabet. 

34. A knotted - string alpha- 
bet. 

35. A fringe alphabet. 

36. A bracelet alphabet. 

37. A pinked-glove alphabet. 

38. A sieve alphabet. 

39. A lantern alphabet. 

40. An alphabet by the smell. 

41. ^' '' taste. 

42. '' " touch. 

43. A variation of all and each 
of these. 

44. A key-pistol. 

45. A most conceited tinder- 
box. 

46. An artificial bird. 

47. An hour water-ball. 

48. A screwed ascent of stairs.* 

49. A tobacco-tongs engine. 

50. A pocket-ladder. 

51. A rule of gradation. 

52. A mystical jangling of 
bells. 

53. A hollowing of a water- 
screw. 

54. A transparent water-screw. 

55. A double water-screw. 



No. 

56. An advantageous change 
of centres. 

57. A constant water flowing 
and ebbing motion. 

58. An often-discharging pis- 
tol. 

59. An especial way for cara- 
bines. 

60. A flask charger. 

61. A way for muskets. 

62. A way for a harquebus, a 
crock, or ship-musket. 

63. For sakers and minyons. 

64. For the biggest cannon. 

65. For a whole side of ship- 
muskets. 

6Q. For guarding several ave- 
nues to a town. 

67. For muske toons on horse-, 
back. 

68. A fire water-work. 

69. A triangle key. 

70. A rose key. 

71. A square key with a turn- 
ing screw. 

72. An escutcheon for all locks. 

73. A transmittible gallery. 

74. A conceited door. 

75. A discourse woven on tape 
or ribbon. 

76. To write in the dark. 

77. A flying man. 

78. A continually-going watch. 

79. A total locking of cabinet 
boxes. 

80. Light pistol-barrels. 

81. A comb conveyance for let- 
ters. 

82. A knife, spoon, or fork con- 
veyance. 

83. A rasping mill. 

84. An arithmetical instru- 
ment. 

85. An untoothsome pear. 

86. An imprisoning chair. 



* Most probably the geometrical staircase now in general use, with 
the addition of a small flight of stairs in the centre, in lieu of the 
common hand-rail, which, being surrounded by a partition of boards, 
would serve as a private communication to the upper stories. — Part- 
ington. 



166 



'A CENTURY OF INVENTIONS. 



No. 

87. A candle-mould. 

88. A coining engine. 

88. A brazen head. 

89. Primero gloves. 

90. A dicing box. 

91. An artificial ring-horse. 

92. A gravel engine. 

93. A ship-raising engine. 

94. A pocket engine to open 
any door. 

95. A double cross-bow. 

96. A way for sea-banks. 

97. A perspective instrument. 

98. An engine so contrived 
that working the primum mobile 
forward or backward, upward or 
downward, circularly or corner- 
wise, to and fro, straight, upright 
or downright, yet the pretend- 
ed operation continueth and ad- 
vanceth; none of the motions 
above-mentioned hindering, much 
less stopping, the other ; but unan- 
imously, and with harmony agree- 
ing, they all augment and con- 
tribute strength unto the intended 
work and operation ; and therefore 
I call this a semi-omnipotent engine^ 
and do intend that a model there- 
of be buried with me. 

99. How to make one pound 
weight to raise one hundred as 
high as one pound falleth, and yet 
the hundred pounds descending 
doth what nothing less than one 
hundred pounds can effect. 

100. Upon so potent a help as 
these two last-mentioned inven- 
tions, a water-work is, by many 
years' experience and labor, so 
advantageously by me contrived, 
that a child's force bringeth up an 
hundred feet high an incredible 



diameter. And I may boldly call 
it the most stupendous work in the 
whole worlds not only with little 
charge to drain all sorts of mines, 
and furnish cities with water, 
though never so high seated, as 
well as to keep them sweet, run- 
ning through several streets, and 
so performing the work of scav- 
engers, as well as furnishing the 
inhabitants with sufficient water 
for their private occasions ; but 
likewise supplying the rivers with 
sufficient to maintain and make 
navigable from town to town, and 
for the bettering of lands all the 
way it runs ; with many more ad- 
vantageous, and yet greater effects 
of profit, admiration, and conse- 
quence ; so that deservedly I deem 
this invention to crown my labors, 
to reward my expenses, and make 
my thoughts acquiesce in way of 
farther inventions. This making 
up the whole Century, and pre- 
venting any farther trouble to the 
reader for the present, meaning to 
leave to posterity a book, wherein, 
under each of these heads, the 
means to put in execution and 
visible trial all and every of these 
inventions, with the shape and 
form of all things belonging to 
them, shall be printed by brass 
plates. Besides many omitted, 
and some of three sorts willingly 
not set down, as not fit to be di- 
vulged, lest ill use may be made 
thereof, but to show that such 
things are also within my knowl- 
edge, I will here in myne owne 
cypher sett downe one of each, 
not to be concealed when duty 
and affection oblige th me. 



quantity of water, -even two feet 

The last three inventions, says Mr. Partington, may 
justly be considered as the most important of the whole 
Century ; and when united with the 68th article, they 
appear to suggest nearly all the data essential for the 
construction of a modern steam-engine. The 68th article 
is as follows : 



THE MAEQUIS OF WOECESTER. 167 

An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire, not 
by drawing or sucking it upward, for that must be, as the philosopher 
calleth it, infra sphcEram aciivitatis, which is but at such a distance. 
But this way hath no bounder, if the vessels be strong enough ; for I 
have taken a piece of a whole cannon, whereof the end was burnt, and 
filled it three quarters full, stopping and screwing up the broken end, 
as also the touch-hole; and making a constant fire under it, within 
twenty-four hours it burst, and made a great crack ; so that having 
found a way to make my vessels so that they are strengthened by the 
force within them, and the one to fill after the other, have seen the 
water run like a constant fountain stream forty feet high ; one vessel 
of water, rarefied by fire, driveth up forty of cold water ; and a man 
that tends the work is but to turn two cocks, that one vessel of water 
being consumed, another begins to force and refill with cold water, 
and so successively, etc. 

The marquis has also furnished us with a " Definition" 
of the above engine, which is exceedingly rare, as the 
only copy known to be extant is preserved in the British 
Museum. It is printed on a single sheet, without date, 
and appears to have been written for the purpose of pro- 
curing subscriptions for a Water Company then about 
to be established. The invention is described as 

"A stupendous, or a water-commanding engine, boundless for height 
or quantity, requiring no external, nor even additional help or force 
to be set or continued in motion but what intrinsically is aiforded from 
its own operation, nor yet the twentieth part thereof. And the engine 
consisteth of the following particulars : 

" A perfect counterpoise for what quantity soever of water. 

*^ A perfect countervail for what height soever it is to be brought 
unto. 

*■' A primum mobile, commanding both height and quantity, regu- 
lator-wise. 

*^ A vicegerent, or countervail, supplying the place and performing 
the full force of man, wind, beast, or mill. 

** A helm, or stern, with bit and reins, wherewith any child may 
guide, order, and control the whole operation. 

'^ A particular magazine for water, according to the intended quan- 
tity or height of water. 

**An aqueduct, capable of any intended quantity or height of 
water. 

*' A place for the original fountain or river to run into, and natu- 
rally of its own accord, incorporate itself with the rising water, and at 
the very bottom of the aqueduct, though never so big or high. 

'^By divine Providence and heavenly inspiration, this is my stu- 
pendous water-commanding engine, boundless for height and quantity. 

"Whosoever is master of weight is master of force ; whosoever is 
master of water is master of both, and, consequently, to him all forci- 
ble actions and achievements are easie.'' 



168 THE MARQUIS OF WOECESTEE. 

Among the documents in the possession of the Duke 
of Beaufort is the following impressive memorial of the 
success of the engine, and the pious gratitude of the in- 
ventor : 

The^Lord Marquesse of Worcester's ejamlatory and extemporary thanks- 
giving Prayer, when first ivith his corporal eyes he did see finished a 
perfect trial of his Water-commanding Engine, delightful and useful 
to ivhomsoever hath in recommendation either knowledge, profit, or 
pleasure. 

Oh infinitely omnipotent God ! whose mercies are fathomlesse, and 
whose knowledge is immence and inexhaustible, next to my creation 
and redemption I render thee most humble thanks from the very bot- 
tom of my heart and bowels for thy vouchsafing me (the meanest in 
understanding) an insight in soe great a secret of nature, beneficent 
to all mankind, as this my water-commanding engine. Suffer me 
not to be puffed upp, O Lord, by the knowing of it, and many more 
rare and unheard off, yea, unparalleled inventions, tryals, and experi- 
ments ; but humble my haughty heart by the true knowledge of myne 
own ignorant, weake, and unworthy nature : proane to all evill, O most 
merciful! Father my creator, most compassionating Sonne my redeem- 
er, and Holyest of Spiritts, the sanctifier, three diuine persons and one 
God, grant me a further concurring grace with fortitude to take hould 
of thy goodnesse, to the end that whatever I doe, unanimously and 
courageously to serve my kind and countiy, to disabuse, rectifie, and 
convert my undeserved, yet wilfully incredulous enemyes, to reim- 
burse thankfully my creditors, to reimmunerate my benefactors, to 
reinhearten my distressed family, and with complaisance to gratifie 
my suffering and confiding friends, may, voyde of vanity or selfe ends, 
be only directed to thy honor and glory everlastingly. Amen. 

As the pensive tourist strays amid the desolate courts 
and roofless halls of Raglan, or views from its battle- 
ments the golden glories of sunset, he may reflect upon 
the vicissitudes of the noble owners of this " famous cas- 
tle fine;" and should the visitor extend his walk to the 
burial-place of the Beauforts in Raglan Church, he will 
there see the arched stone vault which enshrines the re- 
mains of Edward, Marquis of Worcester. 

Of his greatest invention no record has been pre- 
served beyond the articles to which reference has been 
made in the present precis of his labors ; but in our day 
Professor Millington has designed an engine on similar 
principles, and which, with a few alterations, might be 
made available for the purposes recommended by our 
author. 

In the Transactions of the Society of Arts^ vol. iii., 



THE "century." 169 

p. 6, is recommendied to the attention of every mechanic 
the Century^ "which, on account of the seeming im- 
probabihty of discovering many things mentioned there- 
in, has been too much neglected ; but when it is consid- 
ered that some of the contrivances, apparently not the 
least abstruse, have by close application been found to 
answer all that the marquis says of them, and that the 
first hint of that most powerful machine, the Steam- 
engine, is given in that work, it is unnecessary to enlarge 
on the utility of it." 



GEOEGE GRAHAM AND HIS IMPEOVE- 
MENT OF THE WATCH. 

The improvement of Clocks by the application of the 
pendulum was not more essential than the improvement 
in Watches by the application of the balance-spring. 
The honor of this invention is claimed by three very 
eminent men — Huyghens, a Dutchman ; the Abbe Haute- 
feuille, a Frenchman; and our own countryman, Dr. 
Hooke. The balance-spring was soon universally ap- 
plied, and even watches on the old construction were 
altered to receive it. 

It was now found that the old vertical escapement 
(still used in common watches) did not produce sufficient 
accuracy. Hooke, Huyghens, Hautefeuille, and Tom- 
pion, therefore, introduced new principles; but as nei- 
ther succeeded, probably from imperfect execution, the 
old crown-wheel was again adopted. 

The talent and perseverance of these great men were 
not, however, lost, as each of their princij)les has since 
been successfully applied. Huyghens's escapement is 
used in producing the motion of the well-known bottle- 
jack; Hautefeuille's escapement appeared about sixty 
years ago, under the name of the patent (rack) lever ; 
and Hooke's idea has since been fully developed in the 
duplex escapement. 

The first real improvement in escapements was made 
by Graham. This is called the horizontal or cylinder 
escapement ; it was introduced in the beginning of the 
last century, and has been successfully applied up to the 
present time. 

George Graham was born at Horsgill, in Kirklington, 
Cumberland, in 1675, of parents belonging to the Society 
of Friends. At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed 
to Mr. Tompion, the celebrated watchmaker, who kept 
shop at the corner of Water Lane, Fleet Street. Graham 
soon evinced inventive fitness for the art he had chosen, 
conjoined with straightforward character and high prin- 



Graham's watches. l/Zl 

ciple — qualities which endeared him to his master, who 
treated him Hke his own offspring. By his inventive* 
skill and careful work Graham became an excellent 
watchmaker and mechanician ; and, by obtaining a sound 
knowledge of practical astronomy, he perfected several 
means for the nice measurement of time, and invented 
astronomical instruments of first-rate precision and accu- 
racy. This was an era in the history of clockwork. The 
expansion and contraction of metal had been known 
above fifty years ; and although the use of the clock for 
astronomical purposes demanded some compensation for 
the lengthening and shortening of the pendulum by heat 
and cold, art had not supplied this desideratum, until, in 
the year 1715, Graham, by substituting ajar of mercury 
for the pendulum ball, succeeded in retaining the point 
of suspension and the centre of oscillation at the same 
distance from each other. To guard against breakage 
of this pendulum, Graham provided the opposite expan- 
sions of different metals as a compensation by the dead- 
beat escapement, with which, and a gridiron, or mercu- 
rial pendulum, having a heavy ball moving in a very 
small arc of vibration, time-keepers are made whose av- 
erage variation is less than a quarter of a second daily. 

These inventions still continue to be employed, in all 
their early simplicity, in the construction of the best as- 
tronomical clocks of the present day. Graham's hori- 
zontal escapement is still extensively used in the Swiss 
and Geneva watches ; but in the better sort of those of 
English manufacture it has been superseded by the du- 
plex, and recently by the lever, which is nothing more 
than the application of Graham's dead-beat escapement 
to the watch, though patents have been taken out by va- 
rious persons who have claimed the invention.* 

The excellence of Graham's work is attested by the 
south mural quadrant, which was made under his inspec- 
tion, and divided by his own hand, for Dr. Halley, at the 
Royal Observatory, Greenwich. He also invented a sec- 
tor, with which Dr. Bradley discovered two new motions 
in the fixed stars ; and Graham supplied with instru- 
ments the French academicians in their voyage to the 
North Pole, to ascertain the figure of the earth. Gra- 

* Additions to Bcckmann'S Hist. Inventions, etc., vol. i., itli edit. ^ 



172 THE OKEERY INVENTED. 

ham's watches were highly prized. It is related that 
when the French mathematician, Maupertnis, was made 
prisoner at the battle of Molwitz, and taken to Vienna, 
the Grand-Duke of Tuscany, afterward emperor, treated 
him with much kindness, and asked him whether he re- 
gretted the loss of any particular portion of his property 
which the hussars had taken from him. Being much 
pressed, the philosopher acknowledged that he wished to 
save a watch by Graham, of which he had made use in 
his astronomical observations. The duke also had one 
by the same maker, but enriched with diamonds: "See," 
said the duke, taking the watch from his pocket, " it was 
but a joke; they have brought it to me, and I now re- 
turn it." 

Julien le Roy, the celebrated French horologist, also 
bore testimony to the perfection of Graham's watches. 
In 1728 he procured one, said to be the first horizontal 
watch seen in Paris : it was presented to Maupertuis aft- 
er having been fully proved by Le Roy. Graham dis- 
tinguished himself as a Fellow of the Royal Society : he 
was also one of the discoverers of the very remarkable 
fact of the contemporaneous occurrence of magnetic dis- 
turbances over large portions of the earth's surface. This 
discovery was made on the 5th of April, 1741, by the pre- 
concerted observations of Celsius at Upsala and Graham 
in London.* The investigation of this phenomenon has 
since been pursued with great success, especially by the 
establishment of magnetic observatories, first proposed 
by the illustrious Humboldt. 

Desaguliers believes Graham, about the year 1 700, to 
have first invented a movement for exhibiting the mo- 
tion of the earth about the sun at the same time that the 
moon revolved round the earth. This machine being in 
the hands of the instrument-maker^ to be sent with some 
other instruments to Prince Eugene, he copied it, and 
made the first for the Earl of Orrery, and then several 
others, with additions of his own. Sir Richard Steele, 
who knew nothing of Graham's machine, in one of his 

* Its rediscovery in the present centuiy is due to a series of corre- 
sponding observations undertaken by Arago in Paris and KupfFer in 
Kasan, in the years 1825 and 1826. — Weld's History of the Royal 
Society^ vol. ii., p. 438. 



GEAVE OF TOMPION AND GEAHAM. 173 

lucubrations, thinking to do justice to the first encour- 
ager as well as to the first inventor of such a curious in- 
strument, called it, after the earl, an Orrery^ and gave 
Mr. J. Rowley the praise due to Mr. Graham.* 

We find, however, earlier mention of an Orrery than 
the above, in the Journal of Dr. Rowland Davies, Dean 
of Ross (printed for the Camden Society, in 1857). The 
entry, under 1689, is as follows : 

December 14^. In the evening Mr. Milbourn came and sat with 
me, and showed me an account of an automaton projected and made 
by Mr. Watson, of Coventiy, whereby all the stars' motions and plan- 
ets were exactly represented in clockwork, and all the problems and 
observations in astronomy therein fully answered. 

Graham continued his useful labors for the benefit of 
science till his death at his house in Fleet Street in 1751. 
He was buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey, in the 
same grave with his friend and master Tompion; and 
over their remains was placed a slab, with the following 
inscription : 

"Here lies ye body of Thomas Tompion, who died November 20th, 
1713, aged 75. Also Geo. Graham, watchmaker, and F.R.S., whose 
curious inventions do honor to ye British genius, whose accurate per- 
formances are ye standard of mechanic skill. He died ye 16th of 
November, 1751, in ye 78th of his age." 

* The machine has since retained the name, and its invention hais 
often been attributed to Lord Orrery, from its being named after his 
lordship. Orreries have been constructed by several ingenious per- 
sons. There died lately in Scotland Mr. John Fulton, a native of 
Fenwick. He was a self-taught artist, and constructed a beautiful 
Orrery, which was greatly admired in the principal towns of England 
and Scotland, where it was exhibited. Hence the maker was called 
" Fulton of the Orrery. " He was a working shoemaker in his native 
village, of scanty means and education, yet by dint of application dur- 
ing his leisure hours he executed the above instrument with the great- 
est accuracy and finish. He afterward removed to London, and was 
employed in the establishment of Mr. Bate, the well-known mathe- 
matical instrument-maker in the Poultry, where his ingenuity and 
skill were fully demonstrated in making theodolites for the Pacha of 
Egypt, and balances for the Royal Mint. Fulton also applied him- 
self, almost unaided, to the study of languages : he became a good 
French scholar, a proficient in the German language, a student of 
Greek, with a considerable knowledge of Italian. His modesty, his 
unassuming manners, his generosity, his patience, his perseverance, 
and his piety, obtained for him a high place in the estimation of his 
friends. His health failed him through excessive application, and a 
lingering illness brought him to a comparatively early death. 



174 GRAVE OF TOMPION AND GRAHAM. 

But this memorial no longer exists, it having been taken 
up, in 1839, by order of the dean. Mr. Adam Thomson, 
in his interesting volume on Time and Time-keepers^ 
1842, says: "Watchmakers, the writer among the num- 
ber, until prevented by recent restrictions, were in the 
habit of making frequent pilgrimages to the sacred spot : 
from the inscription and the place they felt proud of 
their occupation, and many a secret w^ish to excel has 
arisen while silently contemplating the resting-place of 
the two men Avhose memory they so much revered. 
Their memory may last, but the slab is gone. Who 
would suppose that on a small lozenge-shaped bit of 
marble was all that was left to indicate where lie the 
bodies of ' the Father of Clockmaking,' Thomas Tom- 
pion, and ' Honest George Graham ;' greater benefactors 
to mankind than thousands whose sculptured urns impu- 
dently emblazon merits that never existed?" Graham 
was a man of strict integrity, and of kind and generous 
nature. Many pleasant anecdotes are related of his aids 
to science in communicating to others in the same path 
the results of his ow^n experiments. In money-matters 
he was liberal and open-handed ; and rather than invest 
his savings, he kept them in the house, ever ready to re- 
lieve the necessities of deserving applicants. These are 
traits of loving-kindness w^hich require no monumental 
marble to perpetuate their memory. 

There is not, probably, any example of human skill 
which demands higher qualifications than a perfect watch. 
And Berthoud does not exaggerate when he tells us that 
" to become a good watchmaker it is necessary to be an 
arithmetician, in order to find the revolutions of each 
wheel; a geometrician, to determine the curve of the 
teeth ; a mechanician, to find the forces that must be ap- 
plied ; and an artist, to be able to j^ut into execution the 
principles and rules which these sciences prescribe: he 
must know how fluids resist bodies in motion, the effects 
of heat and cold on different metals, and, in addition to 
these acquirements, he must be endowed by nature with 
a happy genius." 



JOHN HAEEISON AND THE LONGITUDE 
WATCH. 

The method of ascertaining Longitude by means of 
the Watch is briefly as follows. If a navigator has a 
chronometer showing him the exact time at Greenwich, 
the instant that the sun comes to his meridian it is twelve 
o'clock, and the difierence between this time and the 
hour marked by the chronometer gives him his Longi- 
tude ; or, when the time is known at which any particu- 
lar star passes the meridian at Greenwich, if the naviga- 
tor marks the instant at which the star comes to his 
meridian, the difference between this time and the time 
it would appear at Greenwich is the difierence in Longi- 
tude. 

This problem had, however, been but inaccurately 
solved for want of good watches. Huyghens is supposed 
to have been the first who thought of constructing time- 
keepers for this purpose; but at that period, 1664, sufii- 
cient attention had not been paid to the efiects produced 
on metals by the variations of temperature in difierent 
climates, and he unfortunately failed in his experiments. 
Maritime nations had already promised rewards to any 
one who should make the discovery. In 1598, Philip 
III. of Spain ofiered a prize of 1000 crowns ; the Dutch 
followed this example ; the Duke of Orleans, Regent of 
France, ofiered in the name of the king 100,000 livres; 
and the French Academy awarded annually a prize to 
those vrho made the most useful discoveries connected 
with the subject. The English, being the greatest navi- 
gators, were most interested; and in 1714, Parliament 
appointed a committee to consider the question, foremost 
of whom was Sir Isaac Newton, who at once suggested 
the discovery of the Longitude by the dial of an accurate 
time-keeper ; and, upon their recommendation, the Legis- 
lature of Queen Anne, in 1714, passed an act granting 
£10,000 if the method found discovered the longitude to 
a degree, or 60 geographical miles, £15,000 if to 40 miles^ 



176 THE FIRST MARINE CHRONOMETER. 

and £20,000 if to 30 miles, to be determined by a voyage 
from a port in Great Britain to any port in America. At 
length, after the golden promises of sovereigns, and the 
researches of the greatest philosophers of the age had 
for nearly a century and a half failed in the great discov- 
ery, it was made by a self-taught genius, who was bred 
a village carpenter, and never acquii'ed any acquaintance 
with literature. 

John Harrison was born at Faulby, near Pontefract, in 
Yorkshire, in 1693 ; he was the son of a carpenter, which 
occupation he followed for several years: yet he very 
early manifested a taste for mathematical science, said to 
have been first awakened by a copy of some lectures of 
Saunderson the blind mathematician, that accidentally 
fell into his hands. He was also fond of mechanical 
pursuits; and before he was twenty-one he had made 
two wooden clocks by himself, and without having re- 
ceived any instruction in the art. His residence in view 
of the sea is said to have led him to devote himself to the 
construction of marine time-pieces, and in 1728 he first 
came up to London to prosecute this object; in 1736 he 
completed the first chronometer used at sea: it neither 
varied from change of temperature nor the motion of the 
vessel. Having obtained certificates of its excellence 
from Halley, Graham, and others, this time-keeper was 
placed on board a ship of war going to Lisbon, the cap- 
tain of which attested that Harrison had corrected an 
error of about a degree and a half upon their return to 
the English Channel. The Parliamentary Commission- 
ers now presented Harrison with £500, to enable him to 
proceed with his experiments. In 1739 he produced a 
smaller chronometer, which promised to give the longi- 
tude with even greater accuracy. In 1741 he finished 
another smaller than either, which the Fellows of the 
Royal Society considered to be more simple, and less 
likely to be deranged; and in 1749 Harrison received 
the Society's gold medal. 

Having much improved and corrected this third chro- 
nometer, Harrison claimed a trial of it ; and the commis- 
sioners accordingly, in 1761, sent out his son William in 
a king's ship to Jamaica. After eighteen days' naviga- 
tion, the vessel was supposed to be 13° 50^ west of Ports- 



Harrison's longitude watch. 177 

mouth, while the watch, marking 15° lO'' was condemned 
as useless. Harrison, however, maintained that, if Port- 
land Island were correctly marked on the chart, it would 
be seen on the following day; in this he persisted so 
strongly that the captain was induced to continue in the 
same course, and accordingly the island was discovered 
the next day. This raised Harrison and his watch in the 
estimation of the crew, Avho otherwise would not have 
been able to procure the necessary stores during the re- 
mainder of the voyage. In like manner, Harrison was 
enabled by his watch to announce all the islands in the 
order in which they would fall in with them. On his 
arrival at Port Royal, after a voyage of eighty-one days, 
the chronometer was found to be about five seconds slow ; 
and on his return to Portsmouth, after a voyage of five 
months, it had kept time within about one minute five 
seconds, which gives an error of about eighteen miles. 
This was much within the limits of thirty miles prescribed 
by the act of 1714, and Harrison claimed the reward; 
but several objections being taken to the proofs, William 
Harrison made a second voyage, which left no farther 
doubt of Harrison's claim, his chronometer having de- 
termined the position of Barbadoes within the limits 
prescribed by the act. The sum of £20,000 was then 
awarded to him — £10,000 immediately on his explaining 
the principle of construction, the other half on its being 
ascertained that the chronometer could be made by oth- 
ers. Liberal as this reward appears, it must be remem- 
bered that Harrison devoted upward of forty years be- 
fore his inventions were perfected, or their general merit 
fully established. The most important of these improve- 
ments are the gridiron pendulum and the expansion 
balance-wheel ; the one serving to equalize the move- 
ments of a clock, and the other those of a watch, under 
all changes of temperature, and both depending upon the 
unequal stretching, under change of temperature, of two 
different metals, which are so employed to form the rod 
of the pendulum and the circumference of the wheel, that 
the contraction of the one exactly counterbalances the 
expansion of the other.* Another of Harrison's impor- 

* An interesting account of the trial of Harrison's Watch at the 
112 



178 REWARDS FOR CHRONOMETERS. 

tant inventions is the going fiisee^ by which a watch can 
be wound np without interrupting its movement. This 
curious machine, as well as the other time-keepers of 
Harrison, is still preserved at the Royal Observatory, 
Greenwich. Being discovered there in a very dilapidated 
state several years ago, it was put in repair at the ex- 
pense of Messrs. Arnold and Dent. Excepting the es- 
capement-wheel, all the wheels were of wood — merely 
flat disks with wooden teeth. The pinions also were of 
wood. Mr. Dent states that the arrangements for obvi- 
ating friction were so admirable, that on the removal of 
part of the escapement the train of wheels ran down with 
great velocity, although they had not revolved for more 
than a century before. 

Harrison died at his house in Red Lion Square in 
1776, in his eighty-third year. On mechanics, and sub- 
jects connected with that science, he could converse 
clearly ; but he found great difliculty in expressing his 
sentiments in writing, as is evident from a work which 
he left on the construction of time-pieces. Still, his labors 
present a remarkable instance of what natural genius can 
accomplish in one particular line without cultivation. 

It should, however, be added, that the complexity of 
Harrison's time-keeper, and its high price,. £400, left to 
be invented, for practical purposes, an instrument of 
greater simplicity, in the time-keeper of John Arnold, 
for which he and his son received the government re- 
ward of £3000.* In this machine each part performs 
unchecked the oifice assigned to it ; and its extreme vari- 

Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and the general method of rating 
Marine Chronometers, will be found in the Cariosities of Science^ by 
the author of the present work, p. 229-232. 

* Arnold is celebrated for the manufacture of the smallest repeat- 
ing watch ever known : it was made for George III. , to whom it was 
presented on his birthday, June 4, 1764. Although less than six 
tenths of an inch in diameter, it repeated the hours, quarters, and 
half quarters, and contained the first ruby cylinder ever made. It is 
the size of a silver twopenny piece, and its w^eight that of a sixpence. 
So novel was its construction, that Arnold not only designed and ex- 
ecuted the work himself, but had to manufacture the greater part of the 
tools employed in its construction. The king presented 500 guineas 
to Mr. Arnold for this curious watch : and the Emperor of Russia af- 
terward offered the maker 1000 guineas for a duplicate of it, which he 
declined. 



REWARDS FOR CHROl^OMETERS. lY9 

ation in twelve months has been 57 hundredths only. It 
is therefore highly honorable to the English artists, that 
by their ingenuity and skill they have accomplished the 
great object which had occupied the attention of the 
learned of Europe for nearly 300 years, namely, the means 
of discovering the Longitude at Sea. 

In 1793 a committee of the House of Commons gave 
to Thomas Mudge, a London watchmaker (or to his son 
for him), in opposition to the opinion of the Board of 
Longitude, a reward of £3000 for inventing a remontoire 
escapement for chronometers, "not worth a farthing," 
says Mr. E. B. Denison, "and, as indeed it turned out, 
worth a great deal less to his son, who proceeded to 
make the chronometer." Mr. Denison maintains that 
Thomas Earnshaw brought the chronometer to the state 
in which it has remained for the last eighty years, with 
scarcely any alteration: the chronometers of inferior 
artists were always beaten by his whenever they came 
into competition, and these artists afterward copied 
Earnshaw's inventions, and did their best to prevent his 
being rewarded for them. 

The English chronometers, on the whole, enjoy a repu- 
tation superior to those of any other nation ; neverthe- 
less, the latter have attained high excellence. One of 
the New York chronometers supplied to the Grinnell 
Arctic Expedition was subjected to all sorts of exposure 
to which such instruments are liable in a Polar winter, 
but was so exquisitely provided with adjustments and 
compensations for the very great extremes of tempera- 
ture to which it had been subjected, that it was returned 
with a change in its daily rate^ during a year and a 
lialf^ of only the eighteen thousandth part of one second 
of time. It should be borne in mind that the tempera- 
ture registered during the winter in Wellington Straits 
was actually 46° below zero.* 

* Alderman Carter, elected Lord-mayor of London in 1 859, is a 
very successful chronometer-maker, having received several govern- 
ment rewards. 



DR WILLIAM HAEVEY AND THE CIECU- 
LATION OF THE BLOOD. 

The discovery which has given an imperishable glory- 
to the name of Harvey places him in the highest rank of 
natural philosophers. ''The same services which New- 
ton afterward rendered to optics and astronomy by his 
theories of light and gravitation, Harvey conferred upon 
anatomy and medicine by his true doctrine of the Circu- 
lation of the Blood."* 

The early life of Harvey, and the opportunities of his 
education, led him step by step in the brilliant career of 
his investigation, till it was finally crowned with success. 
He was descended from a respectable family in the 
county of Kent, and was born at Folkestone on the 1st 
of April, 1578, in a house of fair stone, which Harvey 
left by will, together with some land adjoining, to Caius 
College, Cambridge. At ten years of age he was sent 
to the Grammar School in Canterbury, and having there 
laid a proper foundation of classical learning, was re- 
moved to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and 
admitted as a pensioner in May, 1593. After spendiug 
five years at the University, he went abroad for the ac- 
quisition of medical knowledge ; and, traveling through 
France and Germany, fixed himself, in his twenty-third 
year, at Padua University. Here he attended with the 
utmost diligence the lectures of Fabricius ab Aquapen- 
dente, the Professor of Anatomy. He taught the exist- 
ence of valves in all the veins of the body ; and from 
that moment Harvey endeavored to discover the use of 
these valves, his success in which inquiry was the found- 
ation of his after fame. He took his doctor's degree at 
Padua in 1G02, when he was only twenty-four years of 
age ; in the same year he returned to England, again 
graduated at Cambridge, and settled in the practice of 
his profession in London. In 1604 he was admitted of 
* Pettigrew's Life of Harvey, 



THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD. 181 

the College of Physicians; and in 1615, when thirty- 
seven years old, he was appointed reader of the anatom- 
ical and surgical lectures at the College. He now serious- 
ly prosecuted his researches on the Circulation of the 
Blood, and it was in the course of these lectures that he 
first publicly announced his new doctrines; but many 
years of experimental verification elapsed before he ven- 
tured to commit these doctrines to the press. Never- 
theless, there is historical evidence to prove that, al- 
though Harvey discovered the fact of the Circulation of 
the Blood, he did not discover the course nor the eauses 
of the circulation. He knew that the blood was carried 
from the heart through the arteries to the tissues, and 
from the tissues, through the veins and lungs, back again 
to the place whence it started. But he knew not how 
the blood passed from arteries to veins ; he knew not 
v^h^ the blood thus moved. In our day, science is in 
possession of the exact course of the circulation ; but the 
exact causes are still under question. We know that 
the circulating system consists of heart, arteries, capil- 
laries, veins, and lymphatics. Harvey knew not the 
capillaries and lymphatics, so that his knowledge of the 
course taken by the blood was necessarily incomplete. 
To form an estimate of what Harvey actually discovered, 
we will first take a rapid view of the Circulation. 

" The heart, as the great centre, shall be our point of 
departure. It is composed of four cavities : two ante- 
chambers, or auricles^ and two chambers, or ventricles. 
Into the right auricle the blood is poured by the veins ; 
it passes thence into the right ventricle, and is driven 
therefrom by a strong contraction along the pidmonary 
artery into the lungs. Here it comes in contact with the 
oxygen of the atmosphere, and changes from venous into 
arterial blood. It now passes along the pidmonary veins 
into the left auricle of the heart, thence into the left 
ventricle, from which it is driven by a powerful contrac- 
tion into the arteries. The pulsing torrent rushes through 
the arteries to the various tissues, where it passes into 
the net-work of capillary vessels. Having served the 
purposes of nutrition, the blood continues its course 
along these capillaries into the veins. Here the stream 
is joined by that of the lymphatics, which, like the roots 



182 haryey's disco yery. 

of a plant in the earth, absorb lymph from the organs in 
which they arise. This confluence of streams hurries on 
till the blood is emptied into the right auricle, from 
which it originally started, and thus is the circle com- 
pleted."* 

The story of HarYcy's discoYery is one of the most in- 
teresting and instructiYe in the whole range of science. 
Its episodes extend OYer not less than scYcnteen cen- 
turies ; and the two centuries that haYe elapsed since 
HarYcy's discoYery haYe not sufiiced entirely to complete 
it. Three capital errors, for sixteen centuries, masked 
the fact of circulation. The first was, that the arteries 
did not contain blood. The second error was, that the 
two chambers of the heart communicated with each 
other by means of holes in the septum diYiding them. 
The third error was, that the Yeins carried the blood to 
the Yarious parts of the body. The first of these errors 
was in part set aside by Galen's proYing that the arteries 
did carry blood; but the composition of the atmosphere 
being unknown in his days, it remained for modern sci- 
ence to proYe that atmospheric air is not contamed in 
the arteries, but only the oxygen thereof, with a slight 
amount of nitrogen and a certain amount of carbonic acid 
gas. The second assertion, of the holes in the septum, 
w^as disproYed in 1543 by Vesalius, the father of modern 
anatomy. The third error, that of the Yeins carrying 
the blood to the tissues, was disproYcd by Michael 
SerYetus showing that the two bloods, Yenous and arte- 
rial, pass one into the other in the lungs, or by the pul- 
monary circulation. This he showed in a work which 
was burned by the theologians ; and SerYetus himself 
was subsequently burned for speculations of another 
kind. Two copies of SerYCtus's work still exist : one, 
reddened and partly consumed by the flames, is in the 
Imperial Library of Paris. Nothing can be less equiYO- 
cal than its description of the passage of the blood from 
the heart to the lungs, where it is agitated, prepared, 
changes its color, and is poured from the pulmonary 
artery into the pulmonary Yein. Still, this was but a 
lucky guess, without influence, and soon forgotten. Six 
years afterward Realdo Colombo rediscoYcred the pul- 

* Blaclcicood' s Edinhiirgh Magazine, No. 514. 



HARYEY^S DISCOYERY. 183 

monary circulation ; and then Csesalpinus, the great bot- 
anist, unaware of what Colombo had written, announced 
the same discoYery, and was the first to pronounce the 
phrase " Circulation of the Blood." 

But nearly cYcry thing remained for HarYey to dis- 
coYer. So far from any one haYing had a clear idea of 
the true theory, no one had CYcn accurately conceiYed 
the true theory oi pulmonary circulation ; for, although 
SerYCtus, Colombo, and Csesalpinus knew that the blood 
passed through the lungs, they fancied only so much 
passed as was necessary for the reception of the " Yital 
spirits;" a quantity which their predecessors fancied 
took its course through the perforated septum of the 
heart. But they had no conception of the entire mass 
of blood traYcrsing the lungs. 

The finding that the Yeins had YalYCS, opening and 
closing like doors, brought the discoYcry of the Circula- 
tion within compass. It was made in 1574 by Fabricius, 
under whom HarYey studied at Padua. These YalYcs, 
prcYcnting any flow from the heart, but admitting the 
flow to the heart, ought to haYe suggested to their dis- 
coYcrer the true interpretation of their use; but Ayc- 
and-forty years elapsed before any one arose who had 
the sagacity to perceiYC the real Yalue of this anatomical 
structure in respect to the blood-currents. Meanwhile, 
although CYcry thing that had been discoYcred or sur- 
mised respecting the Circulation was familiar to CYcry 
anatomist of the great Paduan school in which HarYey 
studied, ncYcrtheless, when he promulgated his theory, 
it was Yehemently opposed. No one except HarYey 
had, for nearly half a century, seen the significance of 
the fact ; and he not only conceived a clear idea of the 
process, but described it minutely and accurately. He 
noticed the successiYe contractions of each auricle and 
Yentricle, which forced the blood into the Yentricle w^hen 
the auricle contracted, and forced it from the Yentricle 
into the lungs when the ventricle contracted — a process 
repeated on the left side with the aerated blood. And 
at each passage of the blood from one cavity to another, 
there were the valves, or " little doors," opening to let 
the current pass, and closing to prevent its reflux. He 
described the course of the blood along the arteries, 



184 OVERTHROW OF GALEN. 

which he attributed to the pulsations of the heart ; and 
in this, instead of Galen's "pulsific virtue," he recog- 
nized the cause of the blood's movement. 

The overthrow of ancient authority was now complet- 
ed. Men dared no longer swear by Galen ; they swore by 
Harvey, who had discovered the greatest fact in the ani- 
mal economy — a fact totally unknown and unsuspected 
by Galen, or any other ancient. The opposition to the 
new system was loud and vehement, but it has been 
greatly exaggerated by historians. It is true that the 
Faculty rejected the doctrine, but eminent men accepted 
it. If Guy Patin was caustic in opposition, Moliere 
laughed at Guy Patin's prejudice, and Boileau ridiculed 
the Faculty. Some anatomists accepted the doctrine, 
and the great Descartes warmly espoused it. Swam- 
merdam and Malpighi, two of the greatest names of the 
century, speak of Harvey with reverence ; and soon no 
one spoke of him in any other tone. Among his admir- 
ers was the writer of certain verses, '^ To the Incompara- 
ble Dr. Harvey, on his Book of the Motion of the Heart 
and Blood," in which these lines occur : 

"There didst thou trace the blood, and first behold 
What dreams mistaken sages coined of old. 
For till thy Pegasus the fountain brake, 
The crimson blood was but a crimson lake, 
Which first from thee did tyde and motion gaine, 
And veins became its channel, not its chaine. 
With Drake and Ca'endish hence thy bays are curl'd, 
Famed circulator of the lesser world." 

But the epithet circulator^ in its Latin invidious signifi- 
cation {qicacJc)^ was applied to Harvey by many in deris- 
ion. To an intimate friend he complained that, after his 
book of the Circulation came out, he fell considerably in 
his practice, and it was believed by the vulgar that he 
was crack-brained. Nevertheless, about twenty-five years 
after the publication of his system, it was received in all 
the universities of the world ; and Hobbes has observed 
that Harvey was the only man, perhaps, who ever saw 
his own doctrines estabhshed in his lifetime. 

The course of the Circulation was not, however, known 
to Harvey, nor, with the means at his disposal, could he 
have traced it. The Microscope was needed ; and the 



RESEARCHES WITH THE MICROSCOPE. 185 

first to employ this instrument in such researches was 
Malpighi, who, four years after Harvey's death, in 1661, 
detected those capillaries which form the channel of com- 
munication between the arteries and veins. Nevertheless, 
in 1668, Leuwenhoeck describes them as if they had been 
previously quite unknown : this was in the tail of a tad- 
pole. "A sight presented itself," says Leuwenhoeck, 
" more delightful than any that my eyes had ever beheld, 
for here I discovered more than fifty circulations of the 
blood in difierent places. I saw that not only the blood 
in many places was conveyed, through exceedingly mi- 
nute vessels, from the middle of the tail toward the edges, 
but that each of these vessels had a curve or turning, and 
carried the blood back toward the middle of the tail, in 
order to be conveyed to the heart. Hereby it appeared 
plainly to me that the blood-vessels I now saw in this 
animal, and which bear the names of arteries and veins, 
are^ in fact^ one and the same — that is to say, that they 
are properly termed arteries so long as they convey the 
blood to the farthest extremities of its vessels, and veins 
when they bring it back toward the heart." Thus, then, 
was the demonstration of the course of the blood com- 
pleted ; and we must confess that it is with surprise we 
find all historians overlooking the great gap in the doc- 
trine which had been left by Harvey — a gap only filled 
up by Malpighi and Leuwenhoeck in their discovery of 
those capillaries forming the true passage of arterial to 
venous blood. 

Harvey was appointed physician to Charles I., and was 
in the habit of exhibiting to him and the most enlighten- 
ed persons of his court the motion of the heart, and the 
other phenomena upon which his doctrines were found- 
ed.* During the Civil War he traveled with the king ; 
and, while staying a short time in Oxford, was made by 
him Master of Merton College, and received the degree 
of Doctor of Medicine. He held the mastership only for 
a few months, when he was displaced by the Parliament- 
ary party, his house was plundered, and several unpub- 
lished works, of which we have only notices in his other 
writings, were destroyed. He and his brother, who was 

* Mr. Hannah has painted this scene with excellent effect : it has 
been engraved. 



186 CAUSE OF THE CIRCULATION. 

a Turkey mercliant, drank coffee before coffee-houses 
came into fashion in London. His visits to his patients 
he made on horseback, with a footcloth, his man follow- 
ing on foot, in the same way in which the judges were 
then accustomed to ride to Westminster Hall. In 1654 
he was elected President of the College of Physicians ; 
but, from age and infirmities, he declined the office. He 
died June 3, 1657, in the eightieth year of his age, and 
was buried at Hampstead, in Essex, where he is lapped 
in lead, and on his breast in large letters was to be read, 
De. William Haryey. There is a fine portrait of Har- 
Yey by Jansen in the library of the College of Physicians ; 
here also are preserved some of the nerves and blood-ves- 
sels used by Harvey in his lectures on the Circulation, 
which he delivered in the house of the College, then in 
Amen Corner: he built also a Museum in the adjoining 
garden, upon the site of the present Stationers' Hall. 
The old College buildings were destroyed in the Great 
Fire. The Harveian Oration (in Latin) is delivered an- 
nually by a Fellow, usually on June 25. 

The real ccmse of the Circulation, however, remains to 
be established. That the heart pumps blood incessantly 
into the arteries, and thus drives the stream onward with 
great force, there is no doubt. This, however, is not the 
sole agent. Professor Draper supplies the answer by 
an hypothesis grounded on a well-known physical law, 
namely, that if two fluids communicate in a capillary 
tube which have different degrees of affinity for the 
walls of that tube, the fluid having the highest affinity 
for the tube will drive the other fluid before it. The 
two fluids in the blood-vessels are arterial and venous, 
and the greater affinity of the arterial blood for the ve- 
nous tissues causes it to drive the venous blood onward. 

In conclusion. Professor Draper's hypothesis is briefly 
this : The arterial blood has an affinity for the tissues, 
which causes it to press forward in the capillaries ; and 
no sooner is that affinity satisfied, than the blood be- 
comes venous, and is pressed forward by the advancing 
column. In the lungs venous blood presses forward to 
satisfy its affinity for the oxygen which is in the air; 
having satisfied this, and become arterial, it is pressed on 
by the advancing column. 



THE CIRCULATION OP THE BLOOD. 187 

The reader who is desirous of pursuing this subject 
more in detail is referred to an able exposition in Slack- 
wood^s Edinburgh Magazine^ No. 514, p. 148-164 — 
" Circulation of the Blood, its Course and History ;" the 
writer availing himself of M. Flourens' Histoire de la 
Decoiiverte de la Circulation dii 8ang^ 1854, and com- 
pleting his labors by a masterly reasoning upon this very 
curious and intricate subject. To this paper we are 
mainly indebted for the facts and new views in the pres- 
ent article. 



DE. JENNER AND HIS DISCOVERY OP 
VACCINATION. 

Few of the many thousand ills which human flesh is 
heir to have spread such devastation among the family 
of man as Small-pox. Its universality has ranged from 
the untold tribes of savages to the silken baron of civil- 
ization, and its ravages on life and beauty have been 
shown in many a sad tale of domestic suffering. To stay 
the destroying hand of such a scourge, which by some 
has been identified with the Plague of Athens, was re- 
served for a genial spirit of our time — such a benefactor 
to his species was Edward Jenner, the discoverer of 
Vaccination. 

The great fact can, however, be traced half a century 
before Jenner's time. In the Journal of John Byrom, 
F.R.S., under June 3, 1725, it is recorded that, 

" At a meeting of the Royal Society, Sir Isaac Newton 
presiding. Dr. Jurin read a case of Small-pox, where a 
girl who had been inoculated and had been vaccinated 
was tried and had them not again ; but another [a] boy, 
caught the small-pox from this girl, and had the conflu- 
ent kind and died." 

This case occurred at Hanover. The inoculation of 
the girl seems to have failed entirely ; it was suspected 
that she had not taken the true small-pox : doubts, how- 
ever, were removed, as a boy, who daily saw the girl, fell 
ill and died, " having had a very bad small-pox of the 
confluent sort." This is the first use of the word Vac- 
cination^ or, more familiarly. Cow-pox, which is an erup- 
tion arising from an insertion into the system of matter 
obtained from the eruption on the teats and udders of 
cows, and especially in Gloucestershire: it is also fre- 
quently denominated vaccine matter ; and the whole af- 
fair, inoculation and its consequences, is called Vaccina- 
tion, from the Latin vacca^ a cow. 

It is admitted that Jenner's merit lay in the scientific 
application of his knowledge of the fact that the chapped 



RAVAGES OF SMALL-POX. 189 

hands of milkers of cows sometimes proved a preventive 
of small-pox, and from those of them whom he endeav- 
ored to inoculate resisting the infection. These results 
were probably known far beyond Jenner's range, and 
long before his time ; for we have respectable testimony* 
of their having come within the observation of a Cheshire 
gentleman, who had been informed of them shortly after 
settling on his estate in Prestbury parish in or about 
1740. This does not in the least detract from Jenner's 
merit, but shows that to his genius for observation, anal- 
ogy, and experiment we are indebted for this application 
of a simple fact, only incidentally remarked by others, 
but by Jenner rendered the stepping-stone to his great 
discovery, or, in other words, extending its benefits from 
a single parish in Gloucestershire to the whole world. 

We agree with a contemporary that, " among all the 
names which ought to be consecrated by the gratitude 
of mankind, that of Jenner stands pre-eminent. It would 
be difficult, we are inclined to say impossible, to select 
from the catalogue of benefactors to human nature an in- 
dividual who has contributed so largely to the preserva- 
tion of life and to the alleviation of suffering. Into 
whatever corner of the world the blessing of printed 
knowledge has penetrated, there also will the name of 
Jenner be familiar ; but the fruits of his discovery have 
ripened in barbarous soils, where books have never been 
opened, and where the savage does not pause to inquire 
from what source he has derived relief No improve- 
ment in the physical sciences can bear a parallel with 
that which ministers in every part of the globe to the 
prevention of deformity, and, in a great proportion, to 
the exemption from actual destruction ."f 

The ravages which the Small-pox formerly committed 
are scarcely conceived or recollected by the present gen- 
eration. An instance of death occurring after vaccina- 
tion is now eagerly seized and commented upon; yet 
seventy years have not elapsed since this disease might 
fairly be termed the scourge of mankind, and an enemy 
more extensive and more insidious than even the plague. 

* Notes and Queries, No. 278. 

t Mr. Pettigrew, in his Lives of British Physicians and Surgeons^ 
1830. 



190 JEXNERS EARLY LIFE. 

A family blighted in its fairest hopes through this terri- 
ble visitation was an every-day spectacle: the imperial 
house of Austria lost eleven of its offspring in fifty years.* 
This instance is mentioned because it is historical; but 
in the obscure and unrecorded scenes of life this pest 
was often a still more merciless intruder.f 

Edward Jenner Avas the third son of the Vicar of 
Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, where he was born May 
17th, 1749. Before he was nine years of age he showed 
a growing taste for natural history in forming a collec- 
tion of the nests of the dormouse ; and when at school 
at Cirencester he was fond of searching for fossils, which 
abound in that neighborhood. He was articled to a sur- 
geon at Sudbury, near Bristol, and at the end of his ap- 
prenticeship came to London, and studied under John 
Hunter, with whom he resided as pupil for two years, 
and formed a lasting friendship with that great man. 
In 1773 he returned to his native village, and commenced 
practice as a surgeon and apothecary with great success. 
Nevertheless, he abstracted from the fatigues of country 
practice sufficient time to form a museum of specimens 
of comparative anatomy and natural history. He was 
much liked, was a man of lively and simple humor, and 
loved to tell his observation of Nature in homely verse ; 
and in 1788 he communicated to the Royal Society his 
curious paper on the Cuckoo. At the same time, he car- 
ried to London a drawing of the casual disease, as seen 
on the hands of the milkers, and showed it to Sir Ev- 
erard Home and to others. John Hunter had alluded 
frequently to the fact in his lectures; Dr. Adams had 
heard of the Cow-pox both from Hunter and Cline, and 
mentions it in his Treatise on Poisons^ published in 
1795, three years previous to Jenner's own publication. 
Still no one had the courage or penetration to prosecute 
the inquiry except Jenner. 

Jenner now resolved to confine his practice to medi- 
cine, and obtained, in 1792, a degree of M.D. from the 
University of St. Andrew's. 

* The grandfather of Maria Theresa died of it, wi'apped, by order 
of the faculty, in twenty yards of scarlet broadcloth. 

t In the Russian empire, small-pox is said to have swept away two 
millions in a single year. — Woodv'dle on Small-pox. 



i -*.- 



JENNEll's DISCOVERY. 191 

We now arrive at the great event of Jenner's life. 
While pursuing his professional education in the house 
of his master at Sudbury, a young countrywoman applied 
for advice ; and the subject of small-pox being casually 
mentioned, she remarked that she could not take the 
small-pox because she had had cow-pox; and he then 
learned that it was a popular notion in that district that 
milkers who had been infected with a peculiar eruption 
which sometimes occurred on the udder of the cow were 
completely secure against the small-pox. The medical 
gentlemen of the district told Jenner that the security 
which it gave was not perfect ; and Sir George Baker, 
the physician, treated it as a popular error. But Jenner 
thought otherwise; and, although John Hunter and oth- 
er eminent surgeons disregarded the subject, Jenner pur- 
sued it. He found at Berkeley that some persons, to 
whom it was impossible to give small-pox by inoculation, 
had had cow-pox, but that others who had had cow-pox 
yet received small-pox. This led to the doctor's discov- 
ery that the cow was subject to a certain eruption which 
had the power of guarding from small-pox ; and, next, 
that it might be possible to propagate the cow-pox, and 
with it security from the small-pox, first from the cow to 
the human body, and thence from one person to another. 
Here, then, was an important discovery, that matter from 
the cow, intentionally inserted into the body, gave a 
slighter ailment than when received otherwise, and yet 
had the same effect of completely preventing small-pox. 
But of what advantage was it for mankind that the cows 
of Gloucestershire possessed a matter thus singularly 
powerful? How were persons living at a distance to 
derive benefit from this great discovery ? Dr. Jenner, 
having inoculated several persons from a cow, took the 
^matter from the human vesicles thus produced, and inoc- 
ulated others, and others from them again, thus making 
it pass in succession through many individuals, and all 
with the same good effect in preventing small-pox. 

An opportunity occurred of making a trial of the lat- 
ter on May 14th, 1796 (a day still commemorated by the 
annual festival at Berlin), when a boy, aged eight years, 
was vaccinated with matter from the hands of a milk- 
maid ; the experiment succeeded, and he was inoculated 



192 VACCINATION DISCOVERED. 

for small-pox on the 1st of July following without the 
least effect. Dr. Jenner then extended his experiments, 
and in 1798 published his first memoir on the subject. 
He had originally intended to communicate his results to 
the Royal Society, but was admonished not to do so, lest 
it should injure the character which he had previously 
acquired among scientific persons by his paper on the 
natural history of the Cuckoo. In the above work Dr. 
Jenner announces the security against small-pox afforded 
by the true cow-pox, and also traces the origin of that 
disease in the cow to a similar affection of the heel of 
the horse. 

The method, however, met with much opposition, un- 
til, in the following year, thirty-three leading physicians 
and forty eminent surgeons of London signed an earnest 
expression of their confidence in the eflScacy of the cow- 
pox. The royal family of England exerted themselves 
to encourage Jenner : the Duke of Clarence, the Duke 
of York, the king, the Prince of Wales, and the queen, 
bestowed great attention upon Jenner. The incalculable 
utility of cow-pox was at last evinced, and observation 
and experience furnished evidence enough to satisfy the 
Baillies and Heberdens, the Monros and Gregorys of 
Britain, as well as the physicians of Europe, India, and 
America. The new practice now began to supersede the 
old plan pursued by the Small-pox Hospital, which had 
been founded for inoculation. The two systems were 
each pursued until 1808, when the Hospital governors 
discontinued small-pox. 

A Committee of Parhament was now appointed to con- 
sider the claims of Jenner upon the gratitude of his coun- 
try. It was clearly proved that he had converted into 
scientific demonstration a tradition of the peasantry. 
Two parliamentary grants of £10,000 and £20,000 were 
voted to him. In 1808 the National Vaccine Establish- 
ment was formed by government, and placed under his 
direction. Honors were profusely showered upon him 
by various foreign princes, as well as by the principal 
learned bodies of Europe. 

Dr. Jenner passed the remainder of his years princi- 
pally at Berkeley and at Cheltenham, continuing to the 
last his inquiries on the great object of his life. He died 



CHAEACTER OF JENNEE. 193 

at Berkeley in February, 1823, at the green old age of 
seventy-four : his remains lie in the chancel of the parish 
church of Berkeley. A marble statue by Sievier has 
been erected to his memory in the nave of Gloucester 
Cathedral ; and another statue of him has been placed in 
a public building at Cheltenham. Five medals have been 
struck in honor of Jenner : three by the German nation, 
one by the Surgeons of the British Navy, and the fifth 
by the London Medical Society. 

IsTo monument of Jenner has been placed in Westmin- 
ster Abbey, whose proudest inmates would be honored 
by such companionship. It was, however, at length de- 
termined to honor this good and great man by placing 
his statue in the metropolis. A subscription for this 
purpose was originated in England,* but nearly half the 
amount (£340) was collected by the Philadelphia Com- 
mittee. The statue — Avhich was inaugurated in Trafal- 
gar Square, May 17, 1858, the hundred and ninth anni- 
versary of Dr. Jenner's birth — was modeled by Mr. Cal- 
der Marshall, R.A., and is cast in bronze. As a compo- 
sition it is successful, the sitting position and the reflect- 
ive attitude being very characteristic of Jenner's placid 
and amiable nature. The doctor wears his university 
gown, and is seated in a classic chair, which is ornament- 
ed with the wand of JEsculapius. The pedestal is of 
gray granite, and is simply inscribed Je^-nee. 

Dr. Jenner was endowed with a rare quality of mind, 
which it may be both interesting and beneficial to sketch. 
A singular originality of thought was his leading char- 
acteristic. He appeared to have naturally inherited what 
in others is the result of protracted study. He seemed 
to think from originality of perception alone, and not 
from induction. He arrived by a glance at inferences 
which would have occupied the laborious conclusions of 
most men. In human and animal pathology, in compar- 
ative anatomy, and in geology, he perceived facts and 
formed theories instantaneously, and with a spirit of in- 
ventive penetration which distanced the slower approach- 
es of more learned men. But, if his powers of mind were 

* The German nation had already struck three medals of Jenner ; 
and in England, the prince consort, to his honor, subscribed liberally 
to the statue fund. 

I 



194 



STATUE OF JENNER. 



singularly great, the qualities which accompanied them 
were still more felicitous. He possessed the most singu- 
lar amenity of disposition with the highest feeling, the 
rarest simplicity united to the highest genius. In the 
great distinction and the superior society to which his 
discovery introduced him, the native cast of his character 
was unchanged. Among the great monarchs of Europe, 
who, when in great Britain, solicited his acquaintance, he 
was the unaltered Dr. Jenner of his birthplace. In the 
other moral points of his character, affection, friendship, 
beneficence, and liberality were pre-eminent. In religion, 
his belief was equally remote from laxity and fanaticism ; 
and he observed to an intimate friend not long before his 
death that he wondered not that the people were un- 
grateful to him for his discovery, but he was surprised 
that they were ungrateful to God for the benefits of 
which he was the humble means. 




statue of Dr. Jenuer, in Trafalgar Square, Londou. 



EULEE'S POWEES OF CALCULATION. 

Leonard Euler, one of the most distinguished math- 
ematicians of the eighteenth century, was born at Basle 
in 1707, and was educated in the University of that city. 
In 1730 he obtained the Professorship of Natural Phi- 
losophy in the Academy of St. Petersburg, In 1735, a 
very intricate problem in mathematics having been pro- 
pounded by the Academy, he completed the solution of 
it in three days ; but the exertion of his mind had been 
so violent that it threw him into a fever, which endan- 
gered his life, and deprived him of the use of one of his 
eyes. In 1741, by invitation of Frederick the Great, 
Euler went to Berlin, where the Princess of Anhalt, the 
king's niece, received from him instructions in the well- 
known facts in the physical sciences ; and on his return 
to St. Petersburg in 1766, Euler published his celebrated 
work, Letters to a German Princess^ in which he dis- 
cusses with clearness the Inost important truths in me- 
chanics, optics, sound, and physical astronomy. This 
Avork has been translated into most of the languages of 
Europe. Euler had previously pubhshed several isolated 
treatises and some hundred memoirs on mathematics. 
During his residence at Berlin the king often employed 
him in calculations relative to the Mint and other sub- 
jects of finance ; in the conducting of the waters of San 
Souci, and in the inspection of canals and other public 
works. By invitation from the Empress Catharine, Eu- 
ler returned to St. Petersburg to end his days. Shortly 
afterward he lost the sight of his other eye, having been 
for a considerable time obliged to perform his calcula- 
tions with large characters traced with chalk upon a 
slate. His pupils and his children copied his calcula- 
tions, and wrote all his memoirs from his dictation. To 
one of his servants, who was quite ignorant of mathe- 
matical knowledge, he dictated his Elements of Algebra^ 
a work of great merit, and translated into English and 
many other languages. 



196 EULERS BLIXD^^ESS. 

Euler now acquired tlie rare faculty of carrying on in 
his mind the most compUcated analytical and arithmet- 
ical calculations ; and his powers of memory wonderfully 
increased even in his old age. M. d'Alembert, when he 
saw him at Berlin, was astonished at some examples of 
Euler's calculating powers which occurred in their con- 
versation. To instruct his grandchildren in the extrac- 
tion of roots, Euler formed a table of the first six powers 
of all numbers from 1 to 100, and he recollected them 
with the utmost accuracy. Two of his pupils having 
computed to the lYth term a complicated converging 
series, their results differed one unit in the 50th chapter; 
and an appeal being made to Euler, he went over the 
calculation in his mind, and his decision was found cor- 
rect. His principal amusement, after he had lost his 
sight, w^as to make artificial loadstones, and to give les- 
sons in mathematics to one of his grandchildren who 
evinced a taste for science. 

In 1771 a dreadful fire broke out at St. Petersburg, 
and reached the house of Euler ; when Peter Grimen, a 
native of Basle, having learned the danger in which his 
illustrious countryman was placed, rushed through the 
flames to Euler's apartment, and brought him away on 
his shoulders. His Hbrary and his furniture were con- 
sumed, but his manuscripts were saved by the exertions 
of Count Orloff. 

Euler underwent the operation of couching, which 
happily restored his sight; but, either from the negli- 
gence of his surgeon, or from his being too eager to avail 
himself of his new organs, he again lost it, and suffered 
much severe pain from the relapse. His love of science, 
however, continued unabated. On September 7th, 1783, 
after having amused himself with calculating upon a slate 
the law of the ascensional motion of balloons, which at 
that time occupied the attention of philosophers, he dined 
with his relation, M'Lexell, and spoke of the planet Her- 
schel (then recently discovered), and of the calculations 
by which its orbit was determined. A short time after- 
ward, as he was playing with one of his grandchildren, 
his pipe fell from his hand ; he was struck with apo- 
plexy, and expired, in the seventy-ninth year of his age. 

Euler's knowledge was not limited to mathematics and 



euler's knowledge. 197 

the physical sciences. He had carefully studied anat- 
omy, and botany, and he was deeply versed in ancient 
literature. He could repeat the 2Eneid of Virgil from 
the beginning to the end, and he could even tell the first 
and last lines in every page of the edition which he used. 
In one of his works there is a learned memoir on a ques- 
tion in mechanics, of which, as he himself informs us, a 
verse of the ^neid gave him the first idea. He amused 
himself with questions of pure curiosity, such as the 
knight's move in chess so as to cover all the squares. 
His various researches have gone far toward creating 
the geometry of situation, a subject still imperfectly 
known. The following is one of the questions which 
Euler has generalized : " At Konigsburg, in Prussia, the 
river divides into two branches, with an island in the 
middle, connected by seven bridges with the adjoining 
shores : it was proposed to determine how a man should 
travel so as to pass over each bridge once, and once 
only," 



ME. GEOEGE BIDDEE AND MENTAL 
CALCULATION. 

The boyhood of Mr. Bidder will be remembered among 
the few records we possess of the higher class of mental 
calculators. The youth has now matured as an eminent 
engineer; and in 1856 Mr. Bidder delivered to the Insti- 
tution of Civil Engineers two addresses, conveying that 
process of reasoning, or action of the mind, by which, 
w^hen a boy, he trained himself in Mental Arithmetic, 
and thus laid the basis of that professional skill which he 
has exercised so beneficially in his great engineering 
works. 

Mr. Bidder is convinced that Mental Calculation can 
be taught to children, and be acquired with greater 
facility and less irksomeness than ordinary arithmetic. 
Still, the eminent mental calculators have been extreme- 
ly few during the last two centuries, among whom Jed- 
ediah Buxton and Zerah Colborne were the most re- 
markable ; but even their powers have not been usefully 
employed, in consequence of their not having subsequent- 
ly had the opportunity of receiving a mathematical edu- 
cation. It has been commonly thought that Mental 
Calculation is an art naturally ingrafted upon peculiarly 
constituted minds; it has also been attributed to the 
possession of great powers of memory ; and it has been 
generally imagined that Mr. Bidder himself has been in- 
debted to unusual powers of memory and a naturally- 
mathematical turn of mind for the celebrity he has ac- 
quired. Now Mr. Bidder emphatically declares this not 
to have been the case ; he has sought every opportunity 
of comparing himself with boys and men who possess 
this faculty, and, except so far as being carefully trained 
and practiced in the cultivation and use of figures, he 
has not found that his memory was more than ordinarily 
retentive. In fact, while at school and at college, he had 
some difficulty in maintaining a decently respectable po- 
sition in the mathematical class. 



MR. GEORGE BIDDER. 199 

Mr. Bidder enunciates as a principle that there is not 
any royal or short road to Mental Calculation. All the 
rules which he employed were invented by him, and are 
only methods of so arranging calculation as to facilitate 
the power of registration ; in fact, he thus arrived at a 
sort of natural algebra, using actual numbers in the place 
of symbols. 

He believes that when he began to deal with numbers he had not 
learned to read, and certainly long after that time he was taught the 
symbolical numbers from the face of a watch. His earliest recollec- 
tion is that of counting up to 10, then up to 100, and afterward to 
1000 ; then, by intuitive process, he taught himself the method of ab- 
breviating the labor of counting — arriving, in fact, at the natural mul- 
tiplication of numbers into each other, attributing to each a separate 
and individual value. 

In this manner the actual value of every number up to 1000 was 
impressed upon his memory, and he then proceeded onward, seriatim, 
up to a million. It was his practice to count numbers practically by 
peas, marbles, or shots ; to compose rectangles of various values, and, 
by counting them, the multiplication table was ultimately the result 
of actual experience and test ; and thus he attained an intimate ac- 
quaintance with numbers multiplied with each other by a tangible 
process, divested of that formidable character under which it was gen- 
erally brought before the young student. 

In this way he learned to multiply up to two places of figures before 
he knew the symbolical characters of the figures, or the meaning of 
the word '^ multiply;" as, instead of the term ''multiplying 27 by 
73," he only understood the expression ''27 times 73." 

All the varieties of numbers up to a million being represented by 
six different designations, or varieties of numbers, viz., units, tens, 
hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands, 
their permutations were only eighteen in number. A boy, therefore, 
who knows his multiplication table up to 10 times 10 registers 50 facts 
in his mind, and with the permutations above mentioned has only to 
store 68 facts. The ordinary multiplication table of 12 times 12 gives 
him 72 facts to store, or 4 additional facts. The machinery, there- 
fore, necessary to enable him to multiply to 6 places of figures consists 
of 4 facts less than that required to enable him to carry the multipli- 
cation table in his mind. 

The application of this, when fairly acquired, may be thus illus- 
trated ; for example, multiplying 173 by 397, the following process is 
performed mentally : 
100X397=39,700 
70 X 300=n21,000=60,700 
TOx 90 ..= 0,300=67,000 

70 X 7 .. ..z= 490=67,490 

3X300 — 900=68,300 

fX 90 _ 270=68,660 

3X 7 _ 21=68,681 

I he last result m each operation being alone registered by the mem- 
ory, all previous results being obliterated. 



200 MR. GEORGE BIDDER 



To show the aptitude of the mind by practice, he will know at 
glance 

That .. .. 400XlT3=69,200 

And then .. .. 3xiT3 — 519 

The difference being 68,081, as above. 

In Addition and Subtraction the same principle, as already explain- 
ed for Multiplication, is adhered to, viz., that of commencing with the 
left-hand side, or the large numbers, and adding successively, keeping 
one result only in the mind. 

Division is, as in ordinary arithmetic, much more difficult than Mul- 
tiplication, as it must be a tentative process, and is only carried out by 
a series, more or less, of guesses ; but no doubt, in this respect, the 
training arrived at by Mental Arithmetic gives the power of guessing 
to a greater extent than is usually attained, and affords a correspond- 
ing facility in the process. Supposing, for instance, it is necessary to 
divide 25,696 by 176, the following will be the process : 100 must be 
the first figure of the factor: 100 times 176 are known at once to be 
17,600 ; subtracting that from 25,696, there remains 8096. It is per- 
ceived that 40 is the next number in the factor ; 40 times 176 = 7040 : 
there then remains 1056 ; that, it is immediately perceived, gives a 
remaining factor of 6, making in all 146. Thus only one result is re- 
tained in the mind at a time ; but, as contrasted with multiplication, 
it is necessary to keep registered in the mind two results which are 
always changing, viz., the remainder of the number to be divided, and 
the numbers of the factor as they are determined ; but if it is known, 
as in the present instance, that 176 is the exact factor, without any 
remainder, having got the first factor, 100, which is perceived at a 
glance, it is known that there are only four numbers which, multiplied 
by 76, can produce a result terminating in 96, viz., 21, 46, 71, and 96, 
and therefore the immediate inference is that it must be 46, as 121 
mnst be too little, and 171 must be too much, therefore 146 must be 
the factor. Thus, the only facility afforded by Mental Calculation is 
the greater power of guessing at every step toward the result. 

Mr. Bidder recommends, as the true course in teaching arithmetic, 
that, before any knowledge of figures is symbolically acquired, the 
process of counting up to ten should be mastered, then up to 100, and 
subsequently to 1000 ; then the multiplication table, up to 10 times 
10, should be taught practically, by the use of peas, marbles, or shots, 
or any bodies of uniform dimensions, by placing them in rectangles or 
squares. 

Having thus induced the student to teach himself the multiplica- 
tion table, nothing will be more easy than to teach him to multiply 
10 by 17, which will be 10x10 + 10 X7; having accomplished this, the 
multiplication of 17 X 13 easily follows, being 10 X 17 -|-3 X 10 + 3 X 7. 
This being executed, it only remains for him to practice multiplication 
up to two places of figures. Concurrently with this should be taught 
the permutations of 100, 1000, etc., into each other, and thus will be 
laid the basis of Mental Calculation for whatever extent, the individual 
student relying upon his own resources for framing his rules for any 
other branch of arithmetic. In order to do this, however, his mind 
must be stored with a certain number of facts, which must be com- 



t a ■! 



ON MENTAL CALCULATION. 201 

pletely at his command ; and advantage should be taken of the mode 
of giving him an insight into natural algebra and geometry. With 
this view, the training should be extended ; and there v^^ould be no 
difficulty in conveying to young minds the knowledge of certain lead- 
ing facts connected with the sciences long before they were capable of 
comprehending the beautiful trains of reasoning by which their truths 
were established. There is no difficulty in impressing permanently an 
appreciation of the relative proportion of the diameter to the circum- 
ference of a circle ; of the beautiful property of the square of the 
hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle being equal to the squares of 
the two sides containing the right angle ; or of the equality of the 
areas of triangles on the same base, contained between the same par- 
allel ; and many others which must occur to all geometricians. 

The same with respect to the properties of several series of num- 
bers ; for instance, 

1-1-3+5, etc., or l+2-[-3, etc., or (l)+ax6)-f-(l-|-3x6)+(l+6x6), etc. 

Mr. Bidder suggests that his mode of proceeding presents advan- 
tages of much greater importance than even the teaching of figures, 
namely, the cultivation of the reasoning powers in general. He would 
through this means introduce a boy to natural geometry and algebra. 
By placing shots or any small symmetrical objects on the circumfer- 
ence and diameter of a circle, he will be able, by actual observation, 
to satisfy himself of their relative proportions. He may simultaneous- 
ly be taught the relation of the area of the circle to the area of the 
square. Advantage may also be taken of this mode to develop many 
other ideas connected with geometry ; as, for instance, that all the 
angles subtended from the same chord in the circle are equal. This 
may be shown by having a small angle cut in pasteboard, and fitted 
to every possible position in which two lines can be drawn within the 
circle upon the same chord. He may also be taught that the rect- 
angles of the portions of any two lines intersecting a circle are equal. 
If the learner once acquire* a feeling for the beauty of the properties 
of figures — surmising that he has any natural taste for arithmetic — 
the discovery of these facts by his own efforts may incite him to 
farther investigations, and enable him to trace out his own path in 
the science. 

" As nearly as I can recollect," says Mr. Bidder, " it 
was at about the age of six years that I was first intro- 
duced to the science of figures. My father was a work- 
ing-man, and my elder brother pursued the same calling. 
My first and only instructor in figures was that elder 
brother; the instruction he gave me commenced by 
teaching me to count up to 10. Having accomplished 
this, he induced me to go on to 100, and there he stopped. 
Having acquired a certain knowledge of numbers by 
counting up to 100, I amused myself by repeating the 
process, and found that by stopping at 10, and repeating 
that every time, I counted up to 100 much quicker than 

I 2 



202 MR. GEORGE BIDDER 



by going straight through the series. I counted up to 
10, then to 10 again=:20, 3 times 10 = 30, 4 times 10== 
40, and so on. This may appear to you a simple process, 
but I attach the utmost importance to it, because it 
made me perfectly familiar with numbers up to 100; 
they became, as it Avere, my friends, and I knew all their 
relations and acquaintances. You must bear in mind 
that at this time I did not know one written or printed 
figure from another, and my knowledge of language was 
so restricted that I did not know there was such a word 
as ' multiply ;' but, having acquired the power of count- 
ing up to 100 by 10 and by 5, I set about, in my own 
way, to acquire the multiplication table. This I arrived 
at by getting peas or marbles, and at last I obtained a 
treasure in a small bag of shot. I used to arrange them 
into squares of 8 on each side, and then, on counting 
them throughout, I found that the whole number amount- 
ed to 64 ; and that fact, once established, has remained 
there undisturbed until this day, and I dare say it will 
remain so to the end of my days. It w^as in this way that 
I acquired the whole multiplication table up to 10 times 
10, beyond which I never went; it was all I required. 

" At the period referred to there resided in a house 
opposite to my father's an aged blacksmith, a kind old 
man, who, not having any children, had taken a nephew 
as his apprentice. With this old gentleman I struck up 
an early acquaintance, and was allowed the privilege of 
running about his workshop. As my strength increased, 
I was raised to the dignity of being permitted to blov/ 
the bellows for him; and on winter evenings I was 
allowed to perch myself on his forge-hearth, listening to 
his stories. On one of these occasions, somebody by 
chance mentioned a sum — whether it was 9 times 9, or 
what it was, I do not now recollect ; but, whatever it 
was, I gave the answer correctly. This occasioned some 
little astonishment ; they then asked me other questions, 
which I answered with equal facility. They then went 
on to ask me up to 2 places of figures: 13 times 17, for 
instance. That was rather beyond me at the time ; but 
I had been accustomed to reason on figures, and I said, 
13 times 17 means 10 times 10 plus 10 times 7, plus 10 
times 3 and 3 times 7. I said 10 times 10 are 100, 10 



1 



OlSr MENTAL CALCULATION. 203 

times 7 are 70, 10 times 3 are 30, and 3 times 1 are 21 ; 
which, added together, give the result 221. Of course 
I did not do it then as rapidly as afterward ; but I gave 
the answer correctly, as was verified by the old gentle- 
man's nephew, who began chalking it up to see if I was 
right. As a natural consequence, this increased my fame 
still more, and, what was better, it eventually caused 
halfpence to flow into my pocket, which, I need not say, 
had the effect of attaching me still more to the science 
of arithmetic; and thus by degrees I got on, until the 
multiple arrived at thousands. Then, of course, my 
powers of numeration had to be increased, and it was 
explained to me that 10 hundreds meant 1000. N^umer- 
ation beyond that point is very simple in its features : 
1000 rapidly gets up to 10,000 and 20,000, as it is simply 
10 or 20 repeated over again, with thousands at the end, 
instead of nothing. So, by degrees, I became familiar 
with the numeration table up to a million. From 2 
places of figures I got to 3 places ; then to 4 places of 
figures, which took me up, of course, to tens of millions ; 
then I ventured to 5 and 6 places of figures, which I 
could eventually treat with great facility ; and on one 
occasion I went through the task of multiplying 1 2 places 
of figures by 12 figures, but it was a great and distress- 
ing effort."* 

* Mr. Bidder's Addresses, in extenso, have been edited and pub- 
lished by Mr. Charles Manby, F.R.S. 



CALCULATING MACHINES. 

The employment of shells and pebbles for performing 
separate arithmetical operations was common before com- 
puters by the pen had attained proficiency for that pm'- 
2)ose. The Roman Abacus was the oldest instrument of 
this kind : it was employed in the south of Europe till 
the end of the fifteenth century, and in England to a later 
period. ^ It consisted of counters, movable in parallel 
grooves, or on parallel wires in a frame, and having the 
diflferent denominations, units, tens, hundreds, etc., ac- 
cording to the grooves in which they Avere placed. In 
China, where the w^hole system is decimal, this instru- 
ment, called Schwampan, is used w^ith great rapidity. 
From the merchants of China, at the great fair of Novo- 
gorod, the Muscovites are thought to have first learned 
the utility of the Abacus, since it is, at the present day, 
the common mode of reckoning in the shops of Moscow, 
the Russian money being in decimals. This is the sim- 
plest form of Calculating Machine with which we are ac- 
quainted. 

" Napier's bones," described at page 140, is another in- 
strument for arithmetical calculations ; and Saunderson, 
the blind mathematician, invented a machine by which he' 
w^as enabled to make computations. 

Blaise Pascal, when scarcely nineteen years of age, de- 
vised a machine for performing arithmetical operations ; 
its construction, however, was a much more troublesome 
task than its contrivance, and Pascal not only injured his 
constitution, but wasted the most valuable portion of his 
life in his attempts to bring it to perfection. A clock- 
maker in Rouen, to whom he had described his earliest 
model, made one of his own accord, which, though utter- 
ly unfit for its purpose, was placed in the cabinet of curi- 
osities at Rouen, and annoyed Pascal so much that he 
dismissed all the workmen in his service, under the ap- 
preliension that other imperfect models might be made 



pascal's calculating machine. 205 

of the new machine they were employed to construct. 
Some time afterward, the Chancellor Seguier, having seen 
Pascal's first model, encouraged him to proceed, and ob- 
tained for him, in May, 1649, the exclusive privilege of 
constructing it ; and he then gave up all his time to the 
machine. The first model which he executed proved un- 
satisfactory both in its form and materials. After suc- 
cessive improvements, he made a second, and then a third, 
which went by springs, and was very simple in its con- 
struction. This machine Pascal actually used several 
times in the presence of many of his friends ; but defects 
gradually presented themselves ; and he executed more 
than fifty models — all of them different ; some of wood, 
others of ivory and ebony, and others of copperir— before 
he completed the machine. 

From this remarkable invention Pascal doubtless ex- 
pected much more reputation than posterity has award- 
ed. This over-estimate of its merits, founded on the 
length of time and the mental energy which it had ex- 
hausted, is strongly exhibited in a letter which he wrote 
to Christina, Queen of Sweden, in 1650, accompanying 
one of the machines. The tone of this letter is frank and 
manly ; " for, though only in his twenty-seventh year, 
Pascal had witnessed, and even experienced, the truth, 
that nations who vaunt most loudly their superiority in 
science and learning have ever been the most guilty in 
neglecting and even starving their cultivators. The 
French monarch had, indeed, given him the exclusive 
privilege of his invention — the right of expending his 
time, his money, and his health in perfecting a machine 
for the benefit of France and the world ; b.ut, like a Brit- 
ish patent bearing the Great Seal of England, it was not 
worth the wax which the royal insignia so needlessly 
adorned."* 

Pascal's machine was an assemblage of wheels and cyl- 
inders : on the convex surfaces of the latter were the 
numbers with which the operations were to be perform- 
ed, and attached to the axles of the cylinders were teeth- 
ed wheels, which were turned by pointers, the additions 
being performed by means of the numbers in the lower 
series of numbers on the cylinders, and the subtractions 
* North British Review^ No. 2. 



206 MR. babbage's difpeeence engine. 

by the upper series. This machine excited a consider- 
able sensation throughout Europe, and many attempts 
were made to improve its construction and extend its 
power. De I'Epine, Boitissendeau, and Grillet in France, 
S. Morland* and Gersten in England, and Poleni in Italy, 
applied to this task all their mathematical and mechan- 
ical skill, but none of them seem to have devised or con- 
structed a machine superior to that of Pascal. The cele- 
brated Leibnitz, however, is believed to have made two 
models of a Calculating Machine which surpassed Pas- 
cal's both in ingenuity and power; but its complicated 
structure, and the great expense and labor which the ac- 
tual execution of it required, discouraged its inventor, 
and Leibnitz could not be prevailed upon to publish any 
detailed account of its mechanism : perhaps all that is 
known of it is that by wheel-work the operations of mul- 
tiplication and division could be jDcrformed without the 
successive additions or subtractions which would be re- 
quired if Pascal's machine were used. 

The obvious value of these machines is for the obtain- 
ing numerical tables with the positive certainty of their 
being wholly exempt from errors ; and, without numer- 
ical tables, astronomers, navigators, engineers, actuaries, 
and, indeed, laborers in every department of science and 
the useful arts, could have made but Kttle progress in 
their several vocations. 

The construction of a Calculating Machine which truly 
deserves that name was reserved for our distinguished 
countryman, Mr. Babbage. While all previous contriv- 
ances performed only particular, arithmetical operations 
under a sort of copartnery between the man and the 
machine, in which the latter played a very humble part, 
the extraordinary invention of Mr. Babbage actually sub- 
stitutes mechanism in the place of man. A problem is 
given to the machine, and it solves it by computing a 
long series of numbers following some given law. In 
this manner it calculates astronomical, logarithmic, and 
navigation tables, as well as tables of the powers and 
products of numbers. It can integrate, too, innumerable 
equations of finite differences ; and, in addition to these 

* See the notice of Morland's Arithmetical Machine at pages 157-8 
of the present work. 



MR. BABBAGE's AKALYTICAL ENGINE. 207 

functions, it does its work cheaply and quickly ; it cor- 
rects whatever errors are accidentally committed^ and it 
^yrints all its calcidations .^* 

The earliest allusion to this grand invention of the age 
occurs in a letter from Mr. Babbage to Sir Humphrey 
Davy, dated July 3, 1822, in which he gives some account 
of a small model of his engine for calculating differences 
(hence Mr. Babbage prefers to call it a Difference En- 
ginef), which "produced figures at the rate of forty-four 
a minute, and performed with rapidity and precision all 
those calculations for which it w^as designed ;" and Sir H. 
Davy witnessed and expressed his admiration of the per- 
formances of this engine. In the following year, upon the 
recommendation of a committee of the Royal Society, 
Mr. Babbage, at the desire of the government, under- 
took to superintend the construction of such an engine. 
He gave his mental labc^* gratuitously : drawings of the 
most delicate nature were made, tools were formed ex- 
pressly to meet mechanical difficulties, and workmen ed- 
ucated in the construction of the machine. Mr. Babbage 
bestowed his whole time upon the subject for many years ; 
and about £17,000 had been expended, when a dispute 
arose with the manager of the mechanical department, 
who withdrew, taking with him all the valuable tools that 
had been used in the work (which he had a legal right to 
do), and the works were suspended. Mr. Babbage now 
devised, upon a principle of an entirely new kind, an An- 
alytical Engine of far simpler construction, to execute 
with greater rapidity the calculations for which the Dif- 
ference Engine was intended, and which should contain 
a hundred variables, or numbers susceptible of changing, 
and each consisting of twenty-five figures. The govern- 
ment, however, abandoned the completion of the work, 
and in 1843 the portion of the Engine, as it existed, was 
placed in the Museum of King's College. It was capa- 
ble of calculating to five figures and two orders of difter- 
ences ; but it is now out of order, and no portion of the 
printing machinery exists. 

Throughout the long series of years which Mr. Bab- 
bage devoted to this great work, he did not receive one 
shining for his invention, his time, or his services, while 

* North British Review, No. 2. t See Frontisioiece. 



208 SCHEUTZ'S DIFFEKENCE ENGINE. 

he declined offers of great emolument, the acceptance of 
which would have interfered with his labors upon the 
Difference Engine. Yet, with unwearied zeal, he has 
since occupied every working and almost every waking 
hour in the contrivance and the construction of the An- 
alytical Engine, carrying on the drawings and experi- 
ments for this new machine at his own expense : the 
mechanical notations for the purpose cover 400 or 500 
large sheets of paper, the original sketches extend to 
five volumes, and there are upward of 100 large draw- 
ings. The following is a summary of the powers of the 
engine : 

It will perform the several operations of simple arithmetic on any 
numbers whatever. It can combine the quantities algebraically or 
arithmetically in an unlimited variety of relations. It can use alge- 
braic signs according to their proper laws, and develop the conse- 
quences of those laws. It can arbitrarily substitute any fonnula for 
any others, effacing the first from the columns on which it is repre- 
sented, and making the second appear in its stead. And, lastly, it can 
effect processes of differentiation and integration on functions in which 
the operations take place by successive steps. It is farther stated that 
the engine is particularly fitted for the operations of the combinatory 
analysis for computing the numbers of Bernouilli, etc. 

The Difference Engine was elaborately described in 
the Edinhurgh Review^ July, 1834 ; from reading which 
Mr. George Scheutz, at that time the editor of a techno- 
logical journal in Stockholm, was so fascinated with the 
subject that he set about constructing a machine for the 
same purpose as that of Mr. Babbage, namely, that of 
calculating and simultaneously printing numerical tables ; 
but, after satisfying himself of the practicability of the 
scheme by constructing models of wood, pasteboard, and 
wire, he relinquished the design. Three years after- 
ward, in 1837, his son, Mr. Edward Scheutz, then a stu- 
dent in the Royal Technological Institute at Stockholm, 
being provided with a work-room in his father's house, 
as well as a lathe and other necessary tools, constructed 
a working model in metal, and succeeded in demon- 
strating the appUcation of the scheme to practical pur- 
poses. The father now applied to the government for 
aid, but was refused. The father and son then worked 
together ; but the severe economy they had been com- 
pelled to use in the purchase of materials and tools, and 



SCHEUTZ'S DIFFEREiq^CE ENGINE. 209 

probably the absence in Sweden of those precious but 
expensive machine-tools which constitute the power of 
modern workshops, rendered this new model unsatis- 
factory in its operations, although perfectly correct in 
principle. Exhausted by these sacrifices, yet convinced 
that with better workmanship a more perfect instrument 
was within their reach, Mr. Scheutz applied for assist- 
ance to the Diet of Sweden ; but the conditions on 
w^hich they reluctantly consented to advance 5000 rix- 
dollars (about £280) were so stringent that the Messrs. 
Scheutz were compelled to renounce the work, and the 
model remained shut up in its case during the ensuing 
seven years. 

The inventors then renewed their application to the 
Diet, and, by the assistance of some members of the Swed- 
ish Academy, the state being secured from loss, a limit- 
ed amount was raised, and the Messrs. Scheutz, after work- 
ing night and day, completed the machine before the end 
of October, 1853. The Diet now granted a reward of 
5000 rix-dollars to the inventors, thus raising their total 
grant to 10,000 rix-dollars (about £560). The new en- 
gine performed its work so perfectly as to require no al- 
teration whatever. 

The size of Messrs. Seheutz's machine, when placed on its proper 
stand and protected by its cover, is about that of a small square piano- 
forte. The calculating portion consists of a series of fifteen upright 
steel axes, passing down the middle of five horizontal rows of silver- 
coated numbering rings, fifteen in each row, each ring being support- 
ed by and turning concentrically on its own small brass shelf, having 
within it a hole rather less than the largest diameter of the ring. 
Round the cylindrical surface of each ring are engraved the ordinary 
numerals from to 9, one of which, in each position of the ring, ap- 
pears in front, so that the successive numbers shown in any horizon- 
tal row of rings may be read from left to right, as in ordinary writing. 

The machine not only calculates the series of numbers, but it im- 
presses each result on a piece of lead, from which a cliche in type- 
metal is taken, thus producing a stereotype plate from which printed 
copies may be obtained free from any error of composing, etc. The 
mechanism is peculiarly simple. The machine calculates to sixteen 
figures, but prints to eight only. By taking out certain wheels and 
inserting others, the machine can be readily caused to produce its re- 
sults in £ s. d., degrees, minutes, and seconds, or any other series of 
subdivisions which may be thought desirable. The machine performs 
its operations, when once set to the law on which the required table 
depends, by simply turning a handle, without any farther fittention, 



210 

the power required for the purpose being extremely small, not more 
than a child of ten years old could supply. The calculations are 
made, and the results impressed on the lead, at the rate of about 250 
figures every ten minutes, the machine being worked slowly. 

In the winter of 1854 the inventors brought their ma- 
chine to London, where Mr. William Gravatt, F. R. S., 
civil engineer, showed and explained the invention to the 
Royal Society. It was next placed in the Great Exhibi- 
tion at Paris, where Mr. Gravatt again kindly worked 
and explained the machine to many scientific gentlemen ; 
and a jury unanimously awarded to it a gold medal. 
"The Emperor Napoleon" (says Mr. Babbage), " true to 
the inspirations of his own genius and to the policy of 
his dynasty, caused the Swedish Engine to be deposited 
in the Imperial Observatory of Paris, and to be placed 
at the disposal of the Members of the Board of Longi- 
tude." 

In 1856 Mr. E. Scheutz revisited London ; and the ma- 
chine was brought from France, and was set to work in 
an apartment of Mr. Gravatt's house. It was subse- 
quently purchased for the Dudley Observatory at Albany, 
U. S., by Mr. Rathbone, a merchant of that city. 

Mr. Babbage, in some observations which he gracefully 
addressed to the Royal Society in 1856, says: 

Mr. Scheutz's engine consists of two parts, the Calculating and the 
Printing ; the former being again divided into two, the Adding and 
the Cariying parts. 

With respect to the Adding, its structure is entirely different from 
my own, nor does it even resemble any one of those in my drawings. 

The very ingenious mechanism for cariying the tens is also quite 
different from my own. 

The Printing part will, on inspection, be pronounced altogether un- 
like that represented in my drawings, which, it must also be remem- 
bered, were entirely unknown to Mr. Scheutz. 

The contrivance by which the computed results are conveyed to the 
printing apparatus is the same in both our engines; and it is well 
known in the striking part of the common eight-day clock, which is 
called "the snail." 

A small volume of Specimens of Tables calculated^ 
stereo-moulded^ and ijrinted by Machinery^ by Messrs. 
Scheutz, is dedicated to Mr. Babbage, in recognition of 
the generous assistance he has afforded to the ingenious 
laborers in a similar field to that in which he has so long 
toiled. The remarkable and imique feature of the book 



SCHEUTZ'S DIFFERENCE ENGINE. 211 

itself is, that the tables and calculations are all j)rinted 
from stereotyped plates produced directly from the ma- 
chine, and without the use of any movable type. 

One of Messrs. Scheutz's Difference Engines, made by 
Messrs. Donkin for the English government, is now work- 
ed in the Registrar General's Office in Somerset House. 

Several other varieties of Calculating Machines have 
been produced within the last twenty years, but neither 
of them can be said to equal in the circumstances of its 
production the interest attached to the above engines. 



^'THE STAEEY GALILEO." INVENTION OF 
THE TELESCOPE. 

There is no instrument or machine of human inven- 
tion (says Sir David Brewster) so recondite in its theory 
and so startling in its results as the Telescope. All 
others embody ideas and principles with which we are 
familiar; and, however complex their construction, or 
vast their power, or valuable their products, they are all 
limited in their application to terrestrial and sublunary 
purposes. The mighty steam-engine has its germ in the 
simple boiler in which the peasant prepares his food. 
The huge ship is but the expansion of the floating leaf 
freighted with its cargo of atmospheric dust ; and the 
flying balloon is but the infant's soap-bubble lightly laden 
and overgrown. But the Telescope, even in its most 
elementary form, embodies a novel and gigantic idea, 
w^ithout an analogue in nature, and without a prototype 
in experience. It enables us to see what would forever 
be invisible. It displays to us the being and nature of 
bodies which we can neither see, nor touch, nor taste, 
nor smell. It exhibits forms and combinations of matter 
whose final cause reason fails to discover, and whose 
very existence even the wildest imagination never ven- 
tured to conceive. Like all other instruments, it is 
applicable to terrestrial purposes ; but, unlike them all, 
it has its noblest application in the grandest and the re- 
motest works of creation. The Telescope was never in- 
vented.* It was a divine gift which God gave to man, 

* Among the individual claims to the invention, none appears to 
have made so near an approach as our celebrated countryman, Roger 
Bacon. In the following passage, extracted from his Opus Majus, he 
describes the phenomena depending on the refraction of light by lenses 
with so much truth, that we should almost feel justified in ascribing 
to him some share in the invention both of the telescope and micro- 
scope : 

*' Greater things than these may be performed by refracted vision. 
For it is easy to understand by the canons above mentioned that the 



INVENTION OF THE TELESCOPE. 213 

in the last era of his cycle, to place before him and beside 
him new worlds and systems of worlds — to foreshadow 
the future sovereignties of his vast empire, the bright 
abodes of disembodied spirits, and the final dwellings of 
saints that have sufiered, and of sages that have been 
truly wise. With such evidences of His power and such 
manifestations of His glory, can we disavow His embas- 
sador, disdain His message, or disobey His commands ?* 
It was in the month of April or May, 1609, that a 
rumor, creeping through Europe by the tardy messen- 
gers of former days, at length found its way to Venice, 
where Galileo was on a visit to a friend, that a Dutch- 
man had presented to Prince Maurice of ^NTassau an op- 
tical instrument which possessed the singular property 
of causing distant objects to appear nearer to the ob- 
server. This Dutchman was Hans, or John Lippershey, 
who, as has been clearly proved by the late Professor 
Moll, of Utrecht, was in possession of a telescope made 
by himself so early as October, 1608. A few days after- 
ward this report was confirmed in a letter from James 
Badorere, at Paris, to Galileo, who immediately apphed 
himself to the consideration of the subject. On the first 
night after his return to Padua, he found, in the doctrines 
of refraction, the principle which he sought. Having 

greatest things may appear exceeding small, and the contrary. For 
we can give such figures to transparent bodies, and dispose them in 
such order with respect to the eye and the objects, that the rays will 
be refracted and bent toward any place we please, so that we shall see 
the object near at hand or at a distance, under any angle we please ; 
and thus from an incredible distance we may read the smallest letters, 
and may number the smallest particles of dust and sand, by reason of 
the greatness of the angle by which we may see them ; and, on the 
contrary, we may not be able to see the greatest bodies close to us, by 
reason of the smallness of the angle under which they appear; for 
distance does not affect this kind of vision except by accident, but the 
magnitude of the angle does so. And thus a boy may appear to be a 
giant, and a man as big as a mountain, forasmuch as we may see the 
man under as great an angle as the mountain, and as near as we 
])lease ; and thus a small army may appear a very great one, and 
though very far off, yet very near to us, and the contrary. Thus, also, 
the sun, moon, and stars may be made to descend hither in appear- 
ance, and to be visible over the heads of our enemies, and many 
things of the like sort, which persons unacquainted with such things 
would refuse to believe." 

* North British Review, No. 3. 



214 Galileo's first telescope. 

procured two spectacle-glasses, both of which were plane 
on one side, while one of them had its other side convex, 
and the other its second side concave, he placed one at 
each end of a leaden tube a few inches long, and, having 
appUed his eye to the concave glass, he saw objects pretty 
large and pretty near him. This Httle instrument, which 
magnified only three times, and which he held between 
his fingers or laid in his hand, he carried to Venice, 
where it excited the most intense interest. Crowds of 
the principal citizens flocked to his house to see the 
magical toy; and after nearly a month had been spent 
in gratifying this epidemical curiosity, Galileo was led to 
understand from Leonardo Deodati, the Doge of Venice, 
that the senate would be highly gratified by obtaining 
possession of so extraordinary an instrument. Galileo 
instantly complied with the wishes of his patrons, who 
acknowledged the present by a mandate conferring upon 
him for life his professorship at Padua, and raising his 
salary from 520 to 1000 florins. 

These details are related, upon the authority of Vivi- 
ani's Life of Galileo^ by Sir David Brewster, who un- 
hesitatingly asserts that a method of magnifying distant 
objects was known to Baptista Porta and others; but it 
seems equally certain that an instrument for producing 
these efiects was first constructed in Holland, and from 
that kingdom Galileo derived the knowledge of its exist- 
ence. In considering the contending claims, it has been 
generally overlooked that a single convex le^is^ whose 
focal length exceeds the distance at which we examine 
minute objects, performs the part of a telescope, when 
an eye, placed behind it, sees distinctly the inverted 
image which it forms. A lens twenty feet in focal 
length will in this manner magnify thirty times ; and it 
was by the same principle that Sir William Herschel 
discovered a new satellite of Saturn, by placing his eye 
behind the focus of the mirror of his forty-feet telescope. 
The instrument presented to Prince Maurice, and which 
the Marquis Spinola found in the shop of John Lipper- 
shey, the spectacle-maker of Middleburg, must have been 
an astronomical telescope, consisting of two convex 
lenses. Upon this supposition, it diflered from that 
which Galileo constructed, and the Italian philosopher 



Galileo's first telescope. 215 

will be justly entitled to the credit of having invented 
that form of telescope which still bears his name, while 
we must accord to the Dutch optician the honor of hav- 
ing previously invented the astronomical telescope. 

The interest which the exhibition of the telescope ex- 
cited at Venice did not soon subside ; Sirturi describes 
it as amounting to phrensy. When he himself had suc- 
ceeded in making one of these instruments, he ascended 
the tower of St. Mark, where he might use it without 
molestation. He was recognized, however, by a crowd 
in the street ; and such was the eagerness of their curi- 
osity, that they took possession of the wondrous tube, 
and detained the impatient philosopher for several hours, 
till they had successively witnessed its effects. Desirous 
of obtaining the same gratification for their friends, they 
endeavored to learn the name of the inn at which Sirturi 
lodged ; but he, overhearing their inquiries, quitted Ven- 
ice early next morning. 

The opticians speedily availed themselves of this won- 
derful invention. Galileo's tube, or the double eye-glass, 
or the cylinder, or the trunk, as it was called — for Demi- 
siano had not then given it the appellation of Telescope — 
was manufactured in great numbers, and in a very infe- 
rior manner. The instruments were purchased merely as 
philosophical toys, and were carried by travelers into 
every corner of Europe. The art of grinding and pol- 
ishing lenses was at this time very imperfect. Galileo, 
and those whom he instructed, were alone capable of 
making tolerable instruments. In 1634 a good telescope 
could not be procured in Paris, Venice, or Amsterdam ; 
and even in 1637 there was not one in Holland which 
could show Jupiter's disk well defined. 

After Galileo had completed his first instrument, which 
magnified only three times, he executed a larger and bet- 
ter one, with a power of about eight, " At length," as 
he himself remarks, " sparing neither labor nor expense," 
he constructed a telescope so excellent that it bore a 
magnifying power of more than thirty times.* 

Thus was Galileo equipped for a survey of the heavens. 
The first celestial object to which he directed his telescope 
was the Moon, which, to use his own words, appeared as 
* North British Review, No. 3. 



216 Galileo's first survey. 

near as if it had been distant only two semidiameters of 
the earth. It displayed to him her mountain ranges and 
her glens, her continents and her highlands, now lying 
in darkness, now brilliant with sunshine, and undergoing 
all those variations of light and shadow which the sur- 
face of our own globe presents to the Alpine traveler or 
to the aeronaut. The four satellites of Jupiter, illumina- 
ting their planet, and suffering eclipses in his shadow like 
our own moon ; the spots on the sun's disk, proving his 
rotation round his axis in twenty-five days ; the crescent 
phases of Venus ; and the triple form, or the imperfectly 
developed ring of Saturn, were the other discoveries in 
the solar system which rewarded the diligence of Galileo. 
In the starry heavens, too, thousands of new worlds were 
discovered by his telescope ; and the Pleiades alone, 
which to the unassisted eye exhibits only seven stars, 
displayed to Galileo no fewer than/br^y.* 

It was then that, to his unutterable astonishment, Gali- 
leo saw, as a celebrated French astronomer (M. Biot) has 
expressed it, " what no mortal before that moment had 
seen — the surface of the moon, like another earth, ridged 
by high mountains and furrowed by deep valleys ; Venus, 
as well as it, presenting phases demonstrative of a spheric- 
al form ; Jupiter surrounded by four satellites, which 
accompanied him in his orbit ; the milky way ; the neb- 
ulae ; finally, the whole heavens sown over with an infi- 
nite multitude of stars too small to be discerned by the 
naked eye." Milton, who had seeii Galileo, described, 
nearly half a century after the invention, some of the 
wonders thus laid open by the telescope : 

*'The moon, whose orb 
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 
At evening from the top of Fesole, 
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe." 

"There are" (says Everett, the American orator) " oc- 
casions in life in which a great mind lives years of rapt 
enjoyment in a moment. I can fancy the emotions of 
Galileo when, first raising the newly-constructed tele- 
scope to the heavens, he saw fulfilled the grand prophecy 
of Copernicus, and beheld the planet Venus crescent like 
* Martyrs of Science. By Sir David Brewster, K. 11. 4th edit., 1858. 



BLINDNESS OF GALILEO. 217 

the moon. It was such another moment as that when 
the immortal printers of Mentz and Strasburg received 
the first copy of the Bible into their hands, the work of 
their divine art ; Hke that when Columbus, through the 
gray dawn of the 12th of October, 1492 (Copernicus, at 
the age of eighteen, was then a student at Cracow), be- 
held the shores of San Salvador ; like that when the law 
of gravitation first revealed itself to the intellect of ISTew- 
ton ; like that when Franklin saw by the stiffening fibres 
of the hempen cord of his kite that he held the lightning 
in his grasp; like that when Leverrier received back 
from Berlin the tidings that the predicted planet was 
found." 

" The starry Galileo, with his woes," is enshrined among 
" the Martyrs of Science." His noblest discoveries were 
the derision of his contemporaries, and were even de- 
nounced as crimes which merited the vengeance of Heav- 
en. He was the victim of cruel persecution, and spent 
some of his latest hours within the walls of a prison ; 
and, though the Almighty granted him, as it were, a new 
sight, to discern unknown worlds in the obscurity of 
space, yet the eyes which were allowed to witness such 
wonders were themselves doomed to be closed in dark- 
ness. Sir David Brewster eloquently says : 

" The discovery of the moon's Libration was the result 
of the last telescopic observations of Galileo. Although 
his right eye had for some years lost its power, yet his 
general vision was sufficiently perfect to enable him to 
carry on his usual researches. In 1636, however, this 
affection of his eye became more serious, and in 1637 his 
left eye was attacked with the same disease : the disease 
turned out to be in the cornea, and every attempt to re- 
store its transparency was fruitless. In a few months 
the white cloud covered the whole aperture of the pupil, 
and Galileo became totally blind. This sudden and un- 
expected calamity had almost overwhelmed Galileo and 
his friends. In writing to a correspondent, he exclaims : 
' Alas ! your dear friend and servant has become totally 
and irreparably blind. Those heavens, this earth, this 
universe, which by wonderful observation I had enlarged 
a thousand times beyond the belief of past ages, are 
henceforth shrunk into the narrow space which I myself 



218 BLINDNESS OF GALILEO. 

occupy. So it pleases God ; it shall, therefore, please me 
also.' Galileo's friend, Father Castelli, deplores the ca- 
lamity in the same tone of pathetic subUmity: 'The 
noblest eye,' says he, ' which nature ever made, is darken- 
ed; an eye so privileged, and gifted with such rare 
powers, that it may truly be said to have seen more than 
the eyes of all that are gone, and to have opened the 
eyes of all that are to come.' "* 

* Martyrs of Science, 4th edit., 1858. 



ISAAC NEWTON MAKES THE PIEST 
EEPLECTINa TELESCOPE. 

According to Newton's own confession, he was ex- 
tremely inattentive to his studies while in the public 
school at Grantham ; and Sir David Brewster, with the 
sympathy of a fond biographer, attributes this idleness 
to the occupation of the mind of the future philosopher 
with subjects in which he f#t a deeper interest. He had 
not been long at school before he exhibited a taste for 
mechanical niventions. With the aid of little saws, ham- 
mers, hatchets, and tools of all sorts, he was occupied 
during his play-hours in constructing models of known 
machines and amusing contrivances. Thus he modeled 
a wind-mill from a mill, which he watched in. course of 
construction, near Grantham. Dr. Stukeley describes this 
working model to have been "as clean and curious a 
piece of workmanship as the original." Newton next 
constructed a water-clock : it had a dial-plate at top, with 
figures of the hours ; the index was turned by a piece of 
wood, which either fell or rose by water dropping. He 
also invented a mechanical carriage, a four-wheeled chair, 
which was moved by the handle or winch wrought by 
the person who sat in it. He also made for the amuse- 
ment of his school-fellows paper kites and lanterns of 
crimpled paper. At home he drove wooden pegs into 
the walls and roofs of the buildings, as gnomons to mark 
by their shadows the hours and half hours of the day ; 
and he carved two dials in stone upon the walls of his 
house at Woolsthorpe.* 

Several years after, when Newton had entered Trinity 
College, Cambridge, we find in one of his commonplace 
books an entry, dated January, 1663-4, " on the 'grind- 
ing of spherical optic glasses' — on the errors of lenses, 
and the method of rectifying them," etc., to which New- 
ton soon applied himself. Descartes had invented and 
described machines for grinding and polishing lenses 
* See School-days of Eminent Men, 1858. 



220 

with accuracy, upon Avhich the perfection of refracting 
telescopes and microscopes depended. Newton, how- 
ever, by the first experiments which he made with a 
prism, found that the perfection of telescopes was limited 
not so much for want of glasses truly figured, as because 
light itself is a heterogeneous mixture of differently refran- 
gible rays, so that an exactly figured glass could not col- 
lect all sorts of rays into one point. 

This new branch of science now occupied much of 
Newton's attention; and among the articles which he 
purchased on his visit to London early in 1669 were 
lenses, two furnaces, and several chemicals. Toward the 
end of 1668, thinking it be^to proceed by degrees, he 
first "made a small perspecWve, to try whether his con- 
jecture would hold good or not." The telescope was 
six inches long. The aperture of the large speculum 
was something more than an inch ; and as the eye-glass 
w^as a plano-convex lens, with a focal length of one sixth 
or one seventh of an inch, "it magnified about forty 
times in diameter," which he believed was more than 
any six-feet refracting telescope could do with distinct- 
ness. It did not, however, through the bad materials 
and the want of a good polish, represent objects so dis- 
tinctly as a good six-feet refractor; yet Sir Isaac saw 
with it Jupiter, and also the horns or " moon-like phase 
of Venus." He therefore considered this small telescope 
as an " epitome" of what might be done by reflections ; 
and he did not doubt that in time a six-feet reflector 
might be made which would perform as much as any 60 
or 100-feet refractor. 

Newton did not, however, resume the construction of 
reflectors till the autumn of 1671, when, finding that 
grinding and polishing the lenses produced very little 
change in the indistinctness of the image, he discovered 
that the defect arose from the different refrangibility of 
the rays of light. He took the glass prism which he had 
purchased at Stourbridge fair, and having made a hole 
in the window-shutter of his darkened room, he admit- 
ted through the prism a ray of the sun's light, which, 
after refraction, exliibited on the opposite wall the Solar 
or Prismatic Spectrum, and by a laborious investigation 
proved the different refrangibility of the rays of light to 
be the real cause of the imperfection of refracting tele- 



THE FIRST REFLECTING TELESCOPE. 221 

scopes, which he proposed to remedy by a metallic spec- 
ulum within the tube, by which the rays proceeding from 
the object are reflected to the eye. Newton according- 
ly set about executing another reflecting telescope with 
his own hands. This consisted of a concave metallic 
speculum, the rays reflected by which were received 
upon a plane metallic speculum inclined 45 ^ to the axis 
of the tube, so as to reflect them to the side of the tube, 
in which there was an aperture to receive a small tube 
with a plano-convex glass, by means of which the image 
formed by the speculum was magnified thirty-eight 
times ; " whereas an ordinary telescope of about two 
feet long only magnified thirteen or fourteen times." 

At the request of some of the members of the Royal 
Society, Newton sent this telescope for inspection, and 
subsequently presented it to that distinguished body. 
It was also shown to King Charles II. This instrument 
is carefully preserved .in the library of the Royal Soci- 
ety at Burlington House, Piccadilly, with the inscription 



'The First Reflecting Telescope, invented by Sir Isaac 
Newton, and made with his own hands." 



1>-J2 STATUE OF NEWTON. 

Such was the first Reflecting Telescope that was suc- 
cessfully constructed and applied to the heavens ; though 
Sir David Brewster describes it as a small and ill-made 
instrument, incapable of showing the beautiful celestial 
phenomena which had been long seen by refracting tele- 
scopes; and more than fifty years elapsed before tele- 
scopes of the Newtonian form became useful in astron- 
omy. 

Nevertheless, this " is the instrument which, under the 
hands of Herschel and Rosse, has grown to proportions 
so gigantic as to require the aid of vast machinery to 
elevate and depress the tube. Newton's first telescope 
is nine inches long. Lord Rosse's six-feet reflector is sixty 
feet in length !"* 

At Grantham, in Lincolnshire, nigh to the hamlet 
wherein Newton Avas born, was reared in 1858 a statue 
of this " greatest genius of the human race." This Avas 
131 years from the date of Newton's death, and verified 
the homely proverb that a prophet is honored every 
where save in his own country and among his own people. 
The statue is of bronze, and is nearly 1 3 feet high ; and 
the sculptor, Mr. Theed, has copied the likeness of Sir 
Isaac from a mask of his face taken after death, and from 
the portrait-bust by Roubiliac. The statue was inaugu- 
rated September 21, when Lord Brougham (one of the 
editors of Newton's works) delivered the address. 

In conclusion, his lordship said: Let it not be imagined that the 
feelings of wonder excited by contemplating the achievements of this 
great man are in any degree whatever the result of national partial- 
ity, and confined to the country which glories in having given him 
birth. The language which expresses her veneration is equaled, per- 
haps exceeded, by that in which other nations give utterance to theirs ; 
not merely by the general voice, but by the well-considered and well- 
informed judgment of tlie masters of science. Leibnitz, when asked 
at the royal table in Berlin his opinion of Newton, said that, *' taking 
mathematicians from the beginning of the world to the time when 
Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half." ''The 
Principia will ever remain a monument of the profound genius which 
revealed to us tlie greatest law of the universe," are the words of La- 
place. "That work stands ])re-cmincnt above all the otlier produc- 
tions of the human mind." "The discovery of that simple and gen- 
eral law, by the greatness and the variety of the objects which it em- 

* Weld's Hist, Royal Society, vol. i. 



223 




Statue of Sir Isaac Newton, at Grantham. 

braces, confers honor upon the intellect of man." Lagrange, we are 
told by D'Alembert, was wont to describe Newton as the greatest gen- 
ius that ever existed; but to add how fortunate he was also, "be- 
cause there can only once be found a system of the universe to estab- 
lish." ''Never," says the father of the Institute of France — one fill- 
ing a high place among the most eminent of its members — ''never," 
says M. Biot, " was the supremacy of intellect so justly established and 
so fully confessed : in mathematical and in experimental science with- 
out an equal and without an example, combining the genius for both 
in its highest degree." The Prindpia he terms the greatest work ever 
produced by the mind of man ; adding, in the words of Halley, " that 
a nearer approach to the Divine nature has not been permitted to mor- 
tals." "In first giving to the world Newton's method of fluxions," 
says Fontenelle, "Leibnitz did like Prometheus — he stole fire from 
heaven to bestow it upon men." "Does Newton," L'Hopital asked, 



224 Newton's "principia." 

"sleep and wake like other men ? I figure him to myself as a celes- 
tial genius, entirely disengaged from matter."* 

* *'The great discovery which characterizes the Prindpia is that 
of the principle of universal gravitation — that every particle of matter 
in the universe is attracted by^ or gravitates to, every other particle of 
matter^ with a force inversely jyroportional to the square of their dis- 
tance. . . . The most complete and successful attempt to make the 
Pnncipia accessible to those who are ' little skilled in mathematical 
science,' has been made by Lord Brougham in his admirable analysis 
of that work, which forms the greater part of the second volume of his 
edition of Paley's Natural Theology,'' — Sir D. Brewster's Life of 
Newton. 



GUINAND'S GLASS FOR ACHEOMATIC 
TELESCOPES. 

The refracting telescope, whose inventor we can not 
confidently name, was a small and useless toy till Galileo 
turned it to the heavens ; and though, in the hands of 
Huyghens and Hevelius, it added new satellites to our 
system, and displayed new forms and structures in the 
primary planets, yet it was only when made achromatic, 
through the labors of Hall, Dollond, Frauenhofer, and 
others, that it became an essential instrument for the ad- 
vancement of astronomy. The reflecting telescope pre- 
sents to us the same peculiarity. We do not know the 
inventor. Even in Sir Isaac Newton's hands, and as 
constructed and applied by himself, it eflfected no dis- 
coveries in the heavens. 

The difliculty of procuring flint-glass free from flaws 
and imperfections long checked the improvement of the 
Achromatic Telescope. All convex lenses of glass, with 
spherical surfaces, as the reader may be aware, form 
images of objects in their focus behind the lens ; but, 
owing to the spherical and chromatic aberrations, a mass 
of images of different colors, and not coincident with 
each other, is the result. Sir Isaac Newton pronounced 
these imperfections to be incurable; but Mr. Chester 
More Hall, a gentleman of Essex, so early as 1733, in im- 
itation of the organ of sight, combined media of different 
refractive powers, and constructed object-glasses of flint 
and crown glass, which corrected the chromatic and di- 
minished the spherical aberration. The telescopes thus 
made (which Dr. Bliss named achromatic, ^. €., destitute 
of color) were neither exhibited nor sold, nor was any 
account of their construction made known to the world. 
In a trial at Westminster about thewpatent for making 
achromatic telescopes, Mr. Hall was allowed to be the 
inventor ; but Lord Mansfield observed that " it was not 
the person who locked his invention in his escritoire that 

K2 



22G Faraday's glass-making. 

ought to profit from such hivention, but he Avho brought 
it forth for the benefit of the pubUc." 

In 1758, however, John Dollond arrived at the same 
result : he reinvented the achromatic telescope, manufac- 
tured the instrument for sale, and for more than half a 
century supphed all Europe with this invaluable instru- 
ment.* 

The monopoly of these telescopes, however, soon passed 
into foreign states. The manufacture of flint-glass had 
been so severely taxed by the British government — as 
though to put down the achromatic telescope by statute — 
that if a philosopher melted a pound of glass fifty times, 
he had to pay the duty upon fifty pounds. When the 
government understood their ignorance of British inter- 
ests, a committee of the Royal Society was permitted to 
erect an experimental glass-house, and to enjoy the priv- 
ilege of compounding a pot of glass without the pres- 
ence and supervision of an exciseman ! The experi- 
mental furnace was erected at Green and Pellatt's Falcon 
Glass-house, and subsequently a room and furnaces were 
built at the Royal Institution ; Dr. Faraday superintended 
the chemical part of the inquiry, and by the year 1830 
the committee had manufactured glass of a superior 
quality for optical purposes. Nevertheless, Dr. Faraday 
considered the results as negative, and the manufacture 
was laid aside. 

The monopoly of the Achromatic Telescope was thus 
lost. What a conclave of Enghsh legislators and phi- 
losophers attempted in vain, was, however, accomplished 
by a humble peasant in the gorges of the Jura, where no 
patron encouraged and no exciseman disturbed him. M. 
Guinand, a maker of clock-cases in the village of Brenetz, 
in the canton of Neufchatel, had been obliged by defect- 
ive vision to grind spectacle-glasses for his own use. 
Thus practically versed in the optics of lenses, he amused 
himself with making small refracting telescopes, which 

* John Dollond was born at Spite Ifields, in London, in the year 
1706. He was descended from French ancestors, who were compelled 
to quit Normandy upon ihe revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis 
XIV. In early life he worked at the loom, but in 1752 he joined his 
son as an optician. He died in 1761, having been struck with apo- 
plexy while engaged in an intense study of Clairaut's Theory of the 
Moon. 



guinand's glass. 227 

he mounted in pasteboard tubes. Meanwhile an achro- 
matic telescope of English manufacture had come into 
the possession of Guinand's master, Jacquet Droz. He 
was permitted to examine it, to separate its lenses, and 
to measure its curves ; and, after studying its properties,, 
he resolved to attempt to imitate the wondrous combi- 
nation. Flint-glass was only to be had in England ; and 
he and his friend, M. Riondon, who went to that country 
to take out a patent for his self-winding watches, pur- 
chased as much glass as enabled Guinand to supply 
several achromatic telescopes. The glass, however, was 
bad ; and the clock-case maker, seeing no way of getting 
it of a better quality, resolved upon making flint-glass 
for his own use. Studying the chemistry of fusion, he 
made daily experiments in his blast furnace, between 
1784 and 1790, with meltings of three or four pounds 
each, and carefully noted down the circumstances and 
the results of each experiment. He succeeded, and 
abandoning his business for the more lucrative one of 
making bells for repeaters, he obtained more means and 
leisure. He purchased a piece of ground on the banks 
of the Doubs, where he constructed a furnace capable of 
fusing two hundred weight of glass. The failure of his 
crucibles, the bursting of his furnaces, and a thousand 
untoward accidents, which would have disconcerted less 
ardent minds, served only to invigorate the unlettered 
peasant. The threads, and specks, and globules, which 
destroyed the homogeneity of his glass, were the sub- 
jects of his constant study; and he at last succeeded in 
obtaining considerable pieces of uniform transparency 
and refractive powers, sometimes twelve^ and in one case 
eighteen inches in diameter. He at last acquired the art 
of soldering two or more pieces of good glass ; and, 
though the line of junction was often marked with glob- 
ules of air or particles of sand, yet by grinding out these 
imperfections on an emeried wheel, and by replacing the 
mass in a furnace, so that the vitreous matter might ex- 
pand and fill up the excavations, he succeeded in effacing 
every trace of junction, and was consequently able to 
produce with certainty the finest disks of flint-glass. 

Frauenhofer, the Bavarian optician, having heard of 
Guinand's success in the manufacture of flint-glass, re- 



228 GUINAND S SECRET. 

paired to Brenetz in 1804, and induced the Swiss artisan 
to settle at Munich, where, from 1805 to 1814, he prac- 
ticed his art, and taught it to liis employer. Frauenhofer 
Avas an apt and willing scholar, and, possessing a thorough 
knowledge of chemistry and physics, he speedily learned 
the i^rocesses of his teacher, and discovered the theory 
of manipulation, of which Guinand knew only the results. 
Thus supplied with the finest materials of his art, he 
studied their refractive and dispersive powers; and by 
his grand discovery of the fixed lines in the spectrum, 
lie arrived at methods of constructing achromatic tele- 
scopes which no other artist had possessed. In these 
laborious researcties he was patronized by Maximilian 
Joseph, King of Bavaria ; and, had he not been carried 
off* by an insidious disease in the prime of life, he w^ould 
have astonished Europe w^th the production of an achro- 
matic object-glass eighteen inches in diameter. 

Guinand remained at Munich until 1814, when he re- 
turned to his native village, where, in 1820, he was visit- 
ed by M. Lerebours, a celebrated optician of Paris, w^ho 
had heard of the success of his processes. Lerebours 
purchased all his glass, and left orders for more ; and M. 
Cauchoix, another skillful Parisian artist, procured from 
him large disks of glass. In this manner refracting tele- 
scopes came to be constructed in France rivaling the 
most finished productions of the Munich artist; and En- 
gland, which Avas long the exclusive seat of the manu- 
facture of achromatic telescopes, had the mortification of 
finally seeing both Germany and France completely out- 
strip her in this branch of practical optics. This she 
owed to the shortsighted policy of the British govern- 
ment, which had placed an exorbitant duty on the manu- 
facture of flint-glass. This vexatious fiscal interference 
has, however, been repealed, and the enterprise with 
which makers and opticians have taken up the construc- 
tion of large object-glasses has led to important results. 

Mr. Apsley Pellatt, in his Curiosities of Glass-making^ 
a work of sound practical value as well as popular inter- 
est, says: "The secret of Guinand's success is considered 
not to have been in the novelty of the materials or pro- 
portions, but in agitating the liquid glass while at the 
highest point of fusion ; then cooling down the entire 



guinand's secret. 229 

contents of the pot in a mass, and, when annealed and 
cool, by cleavage separating unstriated portions, after- 
ward softening into clay moulds. Guinand left two sons, 
one of whom subsequently operated in conjunction with 
M. Bontemps, a scientific French glass-maker, who suc- 
ceeded in making good flint optical glass on the principle 
of mechanical agitation."* 

In 1848, Bontemps, after attaining high eminence in 
his art, was induced to retire from France, and to co- 
operate with Messrs. Chance, Brothers, and Co., of Bir- 
mingham, in improving the quality of their manufactures. 
They conjointly succeeded in producing a disk in flint of 
29 inches in diameter, weighing 2 cwt., and which, being- 
submitted to the operation of grinding, finishing, and 
other processes, in order to prove its quality, received a 
Council Medal at the Great Exhibition of 1851. When 
we recollect that a glass, exceeding only the small diam- 
eter of six inches, undergoes the annealing process Avith 
difliculty, and is liable to cool at the surface 7nore 
especially than in the interior, and that this tendency 
increases with the size, we must regard this production 
of a disk of 29 inches as a very remarkable work. 

* The widow of Guinand, and her other son, set up works in Switz- 
erland upon the father's principles ; they were succeeded by M. 
D-aguet, of Soleure, who sent to the Great Exhibition of 1851 some 
of his products, but only of moderate size. 



SIK WILLIAM HEESCHEL AND HIS TELE- 
SCOPES. 

The long interval of half a century seems to be the 
period of hybernation during which the telescopic mind 
rests from its labors in order to acquire strength for some 
great achievement. Fifty years elapsed between the 
dwarf Telescope of Newton and the large instrument of 
Hadley ; other fifty years rolled on before Sir William 
Herschel constructed his magnificent Telescope ; and fifty 
years more passed away before the Earl of Rosse pro- 
duced that colossal instrument which has already achieved 
such brilliant discoveries.* 

We have just described the construction of Newton's 
dwarf Telescope ; fifty years after which, John Hadley, 
the inventor of the Reflecting Quadrant which bears his 
name, began his experiments, and, probably after many 
failures, completed a telescope in 1720. It was present- 
ed to the Royal Society (of which Hadley was a Fellow), 
as thus recorded in the Journal for January 12, 1721 : 

Mr. Hadley was pleased to show the Royal Society his Reflecting 
Telescope, made according to our President's (Sir Isaac Newton) di- 
rections in his Optics, but curiously executed by his own hand, the 
force of which was to enlarge an object near two hundred times, though 
the length thereof exceeds six feet; and having shown it, he made a 
present thereof to the society, who ordered their hearty thanks to be 
recorded for so valuable a gift. 

This instrument consisted of a metallic speculum about 
six inches in diameter, and its focal length was 5 feet 2\ 
inches. Its plane speculum was made of the same metal, 
about the 15th of an inch thick; and it had six eye- 
pieces, three convex lenses, l-3d, 3-lOths, and ll-40ths of 
an inch, magnifying 190, 208, and 220 times; and an 
erecting eye -piece of three convex lenses, magnifying 
about 125 times. It had also a small refracting telescope 
as a finder, which we believe was first suggested by Des- 
* Sir David Brewster's Life of Sir Isaac Neivton, vol. ii. 



SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL. 231 

cartes, and the whole was mounted upon a stand ingen- 
iously and elegantly constructed. The celebrated Mr. 
Bradley, and the Rev. Mr. Pound, of Wanstead, com- 
pared it with the great Huyghenian refractor, 123 feet 
long, and, though less brightly, they saw with the reflect- 
or whatever they had hitherto discovered with the Huy- 
ghenian, together with the belts of Saturn, and the first 
and second satellites of Jupiter as bright spots on the 
body of the planet. 

After executing another Newtonian telescope of the 
same size, Mr. Hadley made great improvements in those 
of the Gregorian form. He was now Vice-president of 
the Royal Society, and set ab6ut enabling astronomers 
and opticians to manufacture these valuable instruments. 
Mr. Hawksbee first made them for public sale ; others 
did the same. The opticians, with the aid of Molyneaux 
and Hadley, succeeded in the new art of grinding and 
polishing specula. Scottish makers followed ; and, says 
Sir David Brewster, '' in this way the Reflecting Tele- 
scope came into general use, and, principally in the Gre- 
gorian form, it has been an article of trade with every 
regular optician." Notwithstanding these great improve- 
ments, no discovery of importance had yet been achieved 
by the Reflecting Telescope, and nearly three quarters 
of a century had elapsed without any extension of our 
knowledge of the Solar and Sidereal Systems. " This, 
however," continues Sir David, " was only one of those 
stationary intervals during which human genius holds its 
breath, in order to take a new and loftier flight. It was 
reserved for Sir William Herschel and the Earl of Rosse 
to accomplish the great work, and, by the construction 
of telescopes of gigantic size, to extend the boundaries of 
the Solar System, to lay open the hitherto unexplored re- 
cesses of the sidereal world, and to bring within the grasp 
of reason those nebular regions to which imagination had 
not ventured to soar." 

Sir WiUiam Herschel, one of the very greatest names 
in the modern history of astronomical discovery, was self- 
instructed in the science in which he earned his high rep- 
utation. He was born at Hanover in 1738, and was the 
son of a musician in humble circumstances. Brought up 
to his fiither's profession, he was placed, at the age of 



232 SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL. 

fourteen, in the band of the Hanoverian Guards, a detach- 
ment of which being ordered to England in 1757, young 
Herschel accompanied it, and remamed to try his fortune 
in London. Here he had to struggle with many difficul- 
ties. He then passed several years principally in giving 
lessons in music to private pupils in different towns in 
the north of England. In 1765 he obtained the situation 
of organist at Halifax ; and next year he was appointed 
to the same office in the Octagon Chapel at Bath, where 
he settled, with the certain prospect of deriving a good 
income from his profession, if he had made that his only 
or his chief object. There is a mass of stories relating 
to his musical occupations, none of which have any cer- 
tain foundation : as, that he played in the Pump-room 
band at Bath ; and that, when a candidate for the situa- 
tion of organist, he helped his performance by placing 
upon holding notes little bits of lead, which he dexter- 
ously removed in time. 

But long before this, while yet only an itinerant teach- 
er of music in country towns, Herschel had assiduously 
devoted his leisure to the acquiring of a knowledge of 
the Italian, the Latin, and the Greek languages. He then 
applied himself to the study of Robert Smith's profound 
Treatise on Harmonics^ for which purpose it was neces- 
sary that Herschel should make himself a mathematician ; 
and to accomplish this, he laid aside all other pursuits of 
his leisure. At Bath he devoted still more time to math- 
ematical studies. In the course of time he obtained a 
competent knowledge of geometry ; he next studied the 
different branches of science which depend upon the 
mathematics, his attention being first attracted by the 
kindred departments of astronomy and optics. He now 
became anxious to observe with his own eyes those won- 
ders of the heavens of which he had read so much, and 
for that purpose he borrowed from an acquaintance a 
two-feet Gregorian telescope. This instrument interest- 
ed him so greatly that he commissioned a friend in Lon- 
don to purchase one for him of a somewhat larger size ; 
but, fortunately for science, he found the price beyond 
what he could afford. To make up for his disappoint- 
ment, he resolved to attempt to construct with his own 
hands a telescope for himself; and after encountering 



DISCOVERY OF URANUS. 233 

innumerable diificulties in the progress of his task, he at 
last succeeded, and in the year 1774 he completed a five- 
feet Newtonian reflector, with which he distinctly saw 
the ring of Saturn and the satellites of Jupiter. 

Herschel now, becoming dissatisfied with the perform- 
ance of his first instrument, renewed his labors, and in 
no long time produced telescopes of seven, ten, and even 
twenty feet focal distance. In fashioning the mirrors 
for these instruments his perseverance was indefatigable. 
For his seven-feet reflector he actually finished and made 
trial of two hundred mirrors before he found one that 
satisfied him ; one hundred and fifty for his ten-feet, and 
above eighty for his twenty-feet instrument. He usually 
worked at a mirror for twelve or fourteen hours, without 
quitting his occupation for a moment. He w^ould not 
even take his hand from what he was about to help him- 
self to his food, and the little that he ate when so em- 
ployed was put into his mouth by his sister. He gave 
the mirror its proper shape more by a certain natural 
tact than by rule ; and when his hand was once in, as 
the phrase is, he was afraid that the perfection of the 
finish might be impaired by the least intermission of his 
labors. 

It was on the 13th of March, 1781, that Herschel made 
the discovery to which he owes, perhaps, most of his 
popular reputation. On the evening of the above day, 
having turned his telescope (an excellent seven-feet re- 
flector of his own constructing) to a particular part of 
the sky, he observed among the other stars one Avhich 
seemed to shine with a more steady radiance than those 
around it. He determined to observe it more narrow^ly ; 
after some hours, it had perceptibly changed its place — 
a fact which the next day became still more indisputa- 
ble. The Astronomer Royal, Dr. Maskelyne, concluded 
that the luminary could be nothing else than a new com- 
et ; but in a few days it became evident that it was, in 
reality, a hitherto undiscovered planet; this Herschel 
named the Georgium Sidiis^ or Georgian Star, in honor 
of the King of England ; but it has been more generally 
called either Herschel^ after its discoverer, or Uranus. 
The diameter of this new globe has been found to be 
nearly four and a half times larger than our own ; its 



234 DISCOVERY OF THE MOONS OF URANUS. 

size altogether eighty times that of our earth ; its year 
is as long as eighty-three of ours ; its distance from the 
sun is nearly eighteen hundred millions of miles, or more 
than nineteen times that of the earth ; its density, as 
compared with that of the earth, is nearly as 22 to 100, 
so that its entire weight is not far from eighteen times 
that of our planet. Herschel afterward discovered suc- 
cessively ;io fewer than six satelhtes or moons belong- 
ing to his new planet. Mr. De Morgan almost pro- 
phetically wrote: "Its name is appropriate, inasmuch 
as Uranus is the father of Saturn in mythology; but 
what will be done if a new planet should be discovered 
still more distant than Uranus ?" A new planet has 
been discovered by two master minds, independently of 
each other, in a manner which renders the discovery of 
Uranus deeply interesting. 

The merit of this discovery is in itself small. It is the 
method which gave rise to it, on which this part of Her- 
schel's fame must rest. Perceiving how much depended 
on an exact knowledge of telescopic phenomena, and a 
perfect acquaintance with the effect produced by differ- 
ences of instrumental construction, he commenced a reg- 
ular examination of the heavens, taking the stars system- 
atically in series, and using one telescope throughout. 
He was not a mere dilettante star-gazer, but a volunteer, 
carrying on, with no great pecuniary means, a laborious 
and useful train of investigation. 

Herschel's name now became universally known. The 
Copley Medal was awarded to him by the Royal Society. 
The king attached him to his court as private astrono- 
mer, with a salary of £400 a year ; and soon after this 
he came to reside first at Datchet, and then at Slough, 
near Windsor. He now devoted himself entirely to sci- 
ence. In this year, 1781, he began a thirty-feet aerial 
reflector, with a speculum three feet in diameter ; but as 
it Avas cracked in the operation of annealing, and as an- 
other of the same size was lost in the fire from a failure 
in the furnace, his hopes were disappointed. This double 
accident, however, only acted as a stimulus to higher 
achievements, and no doubt suggested the idea of mak- 
ing a still larger instrument, and of obtaining pecuniary 
aid for its accomplishment. In 1785, at the request of 



herschel's forty-feet telescope. 235 

Sir William Herschel, and with the sanction of the Coun- 
cil of the Royal Society, the president, Sir Joseph Banks, 
laid before George III. the great astronomer's scheme 
for the construction of a Reflecting Telescope of colossal 
dimensions. The kmg approved of the plan, and ofiered 
to defray the whole expense of it ; a noble act of liberal- 
ity, which has never been imitated by any other British 
sovereign. 

Herschel next conceived the happy idea of " Gauging 
the Heavens," by counting the number of stars which 
passed at different heights and in various directions, over 
the field of view of fifteen minutes in diameter of his 
twenty-feet reflecting telescope. The field of view each 
time embraced only l-838,000th of the whole heavens; 
and it would therefore require, according to Struve, 
eighty-three years to gauge the whole sphere by a sim- 
ilar process. 

Toward the close of this year Herschel began to con- 
struct his Reflecting Telescope, forty feet in lengthy and 
having a speculum fdly four feet in diameter. It was 
completed August 27, 1789; and Sir William has left a 
very complete description of the operations : 

I began (says Herschel) to construct the forty-feet telescope about 
the latter end of 1785. In the whole of the apparatus none but com- 
mon workmen were employed ; for I made drawings of every part of 
it, by which it was easy to execute the work, as I constantly inspected 
and directed every person's labor, though sometimes there were no 
less than forty different workmen employed at the same time. While 
the stand of the telescope was preparing, I also began the construc- 
tion of the great mirror, of which I inspected the casting, grinding, 
and polishing ; and the work was in this manner carried on with no 
other interruption than what was occasioned by the removal of all the 
apparatus from Clay Hall, where I then lived, to my present situation 
at Slough. Here, soon after my arrival, I began to lay the founda- 
tion upon which, by degrees, the whole structure was raised as it now 
stands ; and the speculum being highly polished and put into the tube, 
I had the first view through it on February 9, 1787. I do not, how- 
ever, date the completing of the instrument till much later ; for the 
first speculum, by a mismanagement of the person who cast it, came 
out thinner on the centre of the back than was intended, and on ac- 
count of its weakness would not permit a good figure to be given to 
it. A second mirror was cast Jan. 26, 1788, but it cracked in cooling. 
Feb. 16, we recast it with peculiar attention to the shape of the back, 
and it proved to be of a proper degree of strength. Oct. 24, it was 
brought to a pretty good figure and polish, and I observed the planet 
Saturn with it. But not being satisfied, I continued to work upon it 



236 herschel's great telescope. 

till Aug. 27, 1789, when it was tried upon the fixed stars, and I found 
it to give a pretty sharp image. Large stars were a little affected 
with scattered light, owing to many remaining scratches in the mir- 
ror. Aug. 28, 1789, having brought the telescope to the parallel of 
Saturn, I discovered a sixth satellite of that planet ; and I also saw 
the spots upon Saturn better than I had ever seen them before, so 
that I may date the finishing of the forty-feet telescope from that 
time.— Phil, Trans, fo?- 1790. 

The thickness of the speculum, which was uniform in every part, 
was 3^ inches, and its weight nearly 2118 pounds; the metal being 
composed of 32 copper, and 10*7 of tin. The speculum, when not in 
use, was preserved from damp by a tin cover, fitted upon a rim of 
close-grained cloth. The tube of the telescope was 39 feet 4 inches 
long, and its width 4 feet 10 inches ; it was made of iron, and was 
3000 pounds lighter than if it had been made of wood. The observer 
was seated in a suspended movable seat at the mouth of the tube, and 
viewed the image of the object with a magnificent lens or eye-piece. 
The focus of the speculum, or place of the image, was within 4 inches 
of the mouth of the lower side of the tube, and came forward into the 
air, so that there was a space for part of the head above the eye, to 
prevent it from interrupting many of the rays going from the object to 
the mirror. The eye-piece moved in a tube carried by a slider direct- 
ed to the centre of the speculum, and fixed on an adjustible founda- 
tion at the mouth of the tube. 

The very first moment this magnificent instrument was 
directed to the heavens, a new body was added to the 
Solar System, namely, Saturn and six satellites, and in 
less than a month after, the seventh satellite of Saturn ; 
"an object," says Sir John Herschel, "of a far higher 
order of difficulty." 

Herschel's Great Telescope stood on the lawn in the 
rear of his house at Slough, and some of our readers, like 
ourselves, may remember its extraordinary aspect Avhen 
seen fi-om the Bath coach-road and the road to Windsor. 
The difficulty of managing so large an instrument, requir- 
ing, as it did, two assistants in addition to the observer 
himself and the person employed to note the time, pre- 
vented its being much used ; and in 1839, the wood-work 
of the telescope being decayed. Sir John Herschel had it 
cleared away : piers were erected on which the tube was 
placed ; that was of iron, and so Avell preserved that, al- 
though not more than one twentieth of an inch thick, 
Avhen in the horizontal position, it contained all Sir John's 
family, besides portions of the machinery and polishing 
apparatus to the weight of a great many tons. Sir John 
attributes this great strength and resistance to decay to 



herschel's discoveries. 237 

its internal structure, very similar to that since patented 
us Corrugated Iron Roofing, the idea of which originated 
with Sir WilHam Herschel at the time he constructed the 
Great Telescope. By the system of triangular arrange- 
ment or diagonal bracing adopted in the wood-work also, 
much strength was gained. 

The entire expense of the Great Telescope, so munifi- 
cently defrayed by George III., including, of course, the 
cost of the construction of tools and the apparatus for 
casting, grinding, and figuring the reflectors, of which 
two were constructed, amounted to £4000. His abode 
at Slough became, as Fourier remarks, one of the most 
remarkable spots of the civilized world. M. Arago says 
it may confidently be asserted that at the little house and 
garden at Slough more discoveries have been made than 
at any other spot on the surface of the globe. Herschel 
married a widow lady, Mrs. Mary Pitt. He soon rose to 
affluent circumstances, partly by the profits arising from 
the sale of his mirrors for reflecting telescopes ; and he 
died wealthy on August 23, 1822. He left one son. Sir 
John Herschel, one of the most active and successful ad- 
herents of science that our day has produced, and who, 
for four years, at the Cape of Good Hope, was engaged 
in making a survey of the Southern Hemisphere similar 
to the surveys which his father made of the Northern. 

Herschel must be remembered by the number of bodies 
which he added to the Solar System, making that num- 
ber half as large again as he found it; and no one indi- 
vidual ever added so much to the facts on which our 
knowledge of the Solar System is grounded. Some idea 
may be formed of his w^onderful diligence from the fact 
that there are no less than sixty-nine papers by him in 
the Philosophical Transactions. The earliest writing 
of Herschel is said to be the answer to the prize question 
in the Ladies'^ Diary for 1779. 

Herschel, by the various means we have glanced at, ac- 
quired success such as the world had never seen before, 
imd a reputation of two-fold splendor, appreciable in its 
diflferent parts by men of the lowest as well as the high- 
est order of cultivation. Admirable as were the imme- 
diate results of his telescopic observations, they would 
have failed to secure him the exalted place now univer- 



238 

sally assigned to him in the history of astronomical dis- 
covery if he had not at the same time been endowed with 
a mind of rare originality and power, combined with a 
strong turn for speculation (Grant's Ilist. Physical As- 
tronomy ^-^.b^^). To him we owe the first proof that 
there exist in the universe organized systems besides our 
own; while his magnificent foreseeings of the Milky 
Way, the constitution of nebulae, etc., first opened the 
road to the conception that what was called the universe 
might be, and in all probability is, but a detached and 
minute portion of that interminable series of similar form- 
ations which ought to bear the name. Imagination 
roves with ease upon such subjects ; but even that dar- 
ing faculty w^ould have rejected the ideas which, after 
Herschel's observations, became sober philosophy. 



THE EAEL OF EOSSE'S EEFLECTING 
TELESCOPES. 

To Sir Humphrey Davy's remark that " the aristocracy 
may be searched in vain for philosophers," we find a 
brilliant exception in the genius, the talent, the patience, 
and the liberality with which an Irish nobleman has con- 
structed telescopes far transcending in magnitude and 
power all previous instruments, whether they were the 
result of private wealth, or of royal or national munifi- 
cence. That nobleman is Lord Oxmantown, who inaugu- 
rated his succession to the Earldom of Rosse by the con- 
struction of a colossal instrument which has already 
achieved brilliant discoveries. Dr. Robinson has elo- 
quently expressed his delight " that so high a problem 
as the construction of a six-feet speculum should have 
been mastered by one of his countrymen — by one whose 
attainments are an honor to his rank, an example to his 
equals, and an instance of the perfect compatibility of the 
highest intellectual pursuits with the most perfect dis- 
charge of the duties of domestic and social life." 

In the improvement of the Reflecting Telescope, the 
first object has always been to increase the magnifying 
power and light by the construction of as large a mirror 
as possible ; and to this point Lord Rosse's attention was 
directed as early as 1828, the field of operation being at 
his lordship's seat. Birr Castle, Parsonstown, about fifty 
miles west of Dublin. For this high branch of scientific 
inquiry Lord Rosse was well fitted, by a rare combina- 
tion of " talent to devise, patience to bear disappoint- 
ment, perseverance, profound mathematical knowledge, 
mechanical skill, and uninterrupted leisure from other 
pursuits."* All these, however, would not have been 
sufficient, had not a command of money been added, the 
gigantic telescope we are about to describe having cost 
certainly not less than twelve thousand pounds. 

* Description of the Great Telescope, by Thomas Wood, M.D. ; 4th 
edit., 1851. 



240 GEIXDING AND POLISHING SPECULA. 

It is impossible here to detail the admirable contriv- 
ances and processes by which Lord Rosse prepared him- 
self for the great work. Like Herschel, he employed 
common workmen. Mr. Weld says, in his excellent ac- 
count of the monster telescope, "- All the workmen are 
Irish ; they were trained under the superintendence of 
y Lord Rosse, being taken from common hedge-schools, 
and selected in consequence of their giving evidence of 
mechanical* skill. The foreman, a man of great intelli- 
gence, is of similar origin ; and Lord Rosse assured me 
such was his skill, that during his lordship's absence he 
felt confident that his foreman could construct a tele- 
scope with a six-foot speculum similar in all respects to 
that now erected." 

In order to grind and polish large specula, Lord Rosse 
soon perceived that a steam-engine and appropriate ma- 
chinery were necessary ; for this purpose he constructed 
and used an engine of two-horse power. 

Lord Rosse ground and polished specula 15 inches, 2 feet, and 3 feet 
in diameter, before he commenced the colossal instrument. He first 
ascertained the most useful combination of metals for specula, in 
whiteness, porosity, and hardness, to be copper and tin. Of this com- 
pound the reflector was cast in pieces, which were fixed on a bed of 
zinc and copper — a species of brass which expanded in the same de- 
gree by heat as the pieces of the speculum themselves. They were 
ground as one body to a true surface, and then polished by machinery 
moved by the steam-engine. The peculiarities of this mechanism were 
entirely Lord Rosse's invention, and the result of close calculation and 
observation : they were chiefly, placing the speculum with the face 
upward, regulating the temperature by having it immersed in water, 
usually at 55° Fahr., and regulating the pressure and velocity. This 
was found to work a perfect spherical figure in large surfaces, with a 
degree of precision unattainable by the hand ; the polisher, by work- 
ing above and upon the face of the speculum, being enabled to exam- 
ine the operation as it proceeded without removing the speculum, 
which, when a ton weight, is no easy matter. 

The contrivance for doing thij? is very beautiful. The machine is 
placed in a room at the bottom of a high tower, in the successive floors 
of which trap-doors can be opened. A mast is elevated on the top of 
the tower, so that its summit is about 90 feet above the speculum. A 
dial-plate is attached to the top of the mast; and a small plane spec- 
ulum and eye-piece, with proper adjustments, are so placed that the 
combination becomes a Newtonian telescope, and the dial-plate the 
object. The last and most important ])art of the process of working 
the speculum is to give it a true parabolic Jigure^ that is, such a figure 
that each portion of it should reflect the incident ray to the same 



GRINDING AND POLISHING SPECULA. 241 

focus. Lord Kosse's operations for this purpose consist, 1st, of a 
stroke of the first eccentric, which carries the polisher along one third 
of the diameter of the speculum ; 2d, a transverse stroke twenty-one 
times slower, and equal to 0*27 of the same diameter, measured on 
the edge of the tank, or 1*7 beyond the centre of the polisher; 3d, a 
rotation of the speculum performed in the same time as thirty-seven 
of the first strokes ; and, 4th, a rotation of the polisher in the same 
direction about sixteen times slower. If these rules are attended to, 
the machine will give the true parabolic figure to the speculum, 
whether it be six inches or three feet in diameter. In the three-feet 
speculum, the figure is so true with the whole aperture that it is 
thrown out of focus by a motion of less than the thirtieth of an inch ; 
*' and even with a single lens of one eighth of an inch focus, giving 
a power of 2592, the dots on a watch-dial are still in some degree de- 
fined.'* 

Thus was executed the three-feet speculum for the 
twenty-six-feet telescope placed upon the lawn at Par- 
sonstown, which in 1840 showed with powers up to 1000 
and even 1600, and which resolved nebulae into stars, and 
destroyed that symmetry of form in globular nebulas 
upon which was founded the hypothesis of the gradual 
condensation of nebulous matter into suns and planets. 

This instrument also discovered a multitude of new ob- 
jects in the moon, as a mountainous tract near Ptolemy, 
every ridge of which is dotted with extremely minute 
craters, and two black parallel stripes in the bottom of 
Aristarchus. Dr. Robinson, in his address to the British 
Association in 1843, stated that in this telescope a build- 
ing the size of the Court House at Cork would be easily 
visible on the lunar surface. 

This instrument was scarcely out of Lord Rosse's 
hands, before he resolved to attempt, by the same proc- 
esses, to construct another reflector, which was com- 
pleted early in 1845. The speculum has six feet of clear 
aperture, and therefore an area four times greater than 
that of the three-feet speculum. The focal length is fifty- 
four feet. It weighs four tons, and, with its supports, *it 
is seven times as heavy as the four-feet mirror of Sir 
William Herschel. The Rosse speculum is placed in one 
of the sides of a cubical wooden box, about eight feet a 
side, in which there is a door, through which two men 
go in to remove or to replace the cover of the mirror. 
To the opposite end is fastened the tube, which is made 
of deal staves an inch thick, hooped with iron clamp- 

Li 



242 THE EARL OF KOSSE'S 

rings like a huge cask. It carries at its upper end, and 
in the axis of the tube, a small oval speculum six inches 
in its lesser diameter. The tube is eight feet diameter 
in the middle, but tapering to seven at the extremities, 
and is furnished Avith internal diaphragms about six and 
a half feet in aperture. The late Dean of Ely (Dr. Pea- 
cock) walked through the tube with an umbrella up. 
The speculum was cast on the 13th of April, 1842, 
ground in 1843, polished in 1844, and in February, 1845, 
the telescope was ready to be tried. The speculum was 
polished in six hoiirs^ in the same time as a small specu- 
lum, and with the same facility, and no particular care 
was taken in preparing the polisher. 

The casting of a speculum of nearly four tons was an 
object of great interest as well as of difficulty. In order 
to insure uniformity of metal, the blocks from the first 
melting, which was effected in three furnaces, were 
broken ujd, and the pieces from each of the furnaces 
were placed in three separate casks. A, B, and C ; then, 
in charging the crucibles for the final melting of the 
speculum, successive portions from cask A were put 
into furnaces a, &, c ; from B into 5, c, a ; and so on. 

In order to prevent the metal from bending or chang- 
ing its form. Lord Rosse made the specimen rest upon a 
surface of pieces of cast iron strongly framed, so as to be 
stiff and light, and carrying levers to give lateral sup- 
port ; it is attached to an immense joint, like that of a 
pair of compasses moving round a pin, in order to give 
the transverse motion for following the star in right 
ascension. This pin is fixed to the centre-piece between 
two trunnions, like those of an enormous mortar, lying 
east and west, and upon Avhich the telescope has its mo- 
tion in altitude. Two specula have been provided : one 
contains three and a half, and the other four tons of 
metal, the composition of which is one hundred and 
twenty-six parts in weight of copper to fifty-seven and a 
half of tin. 

The enormous tube is established between two lofty 
castellated piers sixty feet high, and is raised to different 
altitudes by a strong chain-cable attached to the top of 
the tube. This cable passes over a pulley on a frame 
down to a windlass on the ground, which is wrought by 



GREAT KEFLECTIl^G TELESCOPE. 



243 



two assistants. To the frame are attached chain-guys, 
fastened to the counterweight; and the telescope is 
balanced by these counterweights suspended by chains, 
which are fixed to the sides of the tube, and pass over 
large iron pulleys. 

On the eastern pier is a strong cast-iron semicircle, 
with which the telescope is connected by a rack-bar 
attached to the tube by wheelwork ; so that, by means 
of a handle near the ey€-piece, the observer can move 
the telescope along the bar on either side of the meridi- 
an, to the distance of an hour for an equatorial star. On 
the v^estern pier are stairs and galleries. The observing 
gallery is moved along a railway by means of w^heels 
and a winch, and the galleries can be raised by ingenious 
mechanism to various altitudes. Sometimes the galleries, 
filled with observers, are suspended midway between the 
two piers, over a chasm sixty feet deep. 

So exquisitely adjusted is the machinery connected 
with this gigantic instrument, that the tube is moved 
w^ith all the ease and precision of that of a microscope. 

In order to form an idea of the efifective magnitude of 
this colossal telescope (says Sir David Brewster), we 
must compare it with other instruments, as in the follow- 
ing table, which contains the number of square inches in 
each speculum, on the supposition that they were square 
in place of*round : 



Names of makers. 


Diameter of speculum 


Area of surface. 


Newton . . 


1 inch . 


1 square inch. 


i(. 


2-37 inches 




5-6 square inches 


Hadley . . 


4-5 




20 




u 


. 5 




25 




Hawksbce . 


. 9 




81 




Ramage . . 


21 *' 




441 




Lassels . . 


. . 2 feet . 




576 




Lord Rosse . 


. 2 *' . . 




576 




u 


. . 3 ^' . . 




1296 


U <( 


Herschel . . 


. . 4 ^' . . 




2304 




Lord Rosse . 


. . 6 ^^ . . 




5184 





This magnificent instrument, by far the most powerful 
which the genius of man has hitherto executed for the 
purpose of exploring the grand phenomena of the heav- 
ens, has already, in the hands of its noble owner, done 
valuable service to astronomy by the light which it has 



244 THE EARL OF ROSSE's 

thrown upon the structure of the nebular part of the 
universe. Many nebulae, which had hitherto resisted all 
attempts to resolve them with instruments of inferior 
power, have been found to consist w^holly of stars. 
Others exhibit peculiarities of structure totally unex- 
pected. Thus former observers suggested the probabih- 
ty of the nebula No. 51 in Messier's catalogue being a 
vast sidereal system, identical in structure with a smaller 
one in its immediate vicinity, and to which it offered a 
striking analogy. The telescope of Lord Rosse has, 
however, destroyed this interesting surmise, by showing 
the nebula to be of a totally different structure — to be, 
in fact, composed of a series of spiral convolutions, ar- 
ranged with remarkable regularity: and a connection 
has also been traced by means of these spirals between 
the nebula and its companion. 

By means of the telescope, the flat bottom of the 
crater in the moon called Albateginus is distinctly seen 
to be strewed with blocks, not visible with less powerful 
instruments ; while the exterior of another (Aristillus) is 
intersected with deep gullies radiating from its centre. 

" We have in the mornmgs" (says Sir David Brewster) 
"walked again and again, and ever with new delight, 
along the mystic tube ; and at midnight, with its distin- 
guished architect, pondered over the marvelous sights 
which it discloses : the satellites, and belts and rings of 
Saturn — the old and new ring, Avhich is advancing with 
its crest of waters to the body of the planet — the rocks, 
and mountains, and valleys, and extinct volcanoes of the 
moon — ^the crescent of Venus, with its mountainous out- 
line — ^the systems of double and triple stars — the nebulae 
and starry clusters of every variety of shape — and those 
spiral nebular formations which baffle human comprehen- 
sion, and constitute the greatest achievement in modern 
discovery." 

The Astronomer Royal, Mr. Airy, alludes to the im- 
pression made by the enormous light of the telescope — 
partly by the modifications produced in the appearance 
of nebulae already figured, partly by the great number of 
stars seen at a distance from the Milky Way, and partly 
from the prodigious brilliancy of Saturn. The account 
given by another astronomer of the appearance of Jupiter 



GREAT REFLECTING TELESCOPE. 



245 



was that it resembled a coach-lamp in the telescope, and 
this well expresses the blaze of light which is seen in the 
instrument. 

A new difficulty has, however, arisen from these vast 
successes in telescopic construction. To insure the best 
performance of a telescope, not only should there be a 
cloudless sky, but a perfectly quiescent state of the whole 
atmosphere — "a most serene and quiet air;" and this is 
indispensable for high magnifying powers ; yet so rarely 
is this state of the air to be found at the sea-level, that 
Lord Rosse assures us that whole years have passed 
away without affording him, among an abundance of 
clear nights, one of such accurately defining quality as 
to enable him to use the higher magnifying powers of 
his great reflecting telescope to any advantage. And 
this is a difficulty which continually increases with the 
size and excellence of the telescopes employed. Hence 
was suggested the expediency of transporting powerful 
instruments to the southern hemisphere for the physical 
observation of the celestial bodies ; and in 1856 the gov- 
ernment consented to a summer expedition to the Peak 
of Teneriffe, when Mr. Piazzi Smyth, with a most valuable 
equatorial instrument, at elevations of 8903 and 10,702 
feet, found the skies often freer from haze, the stars 
always decidedly brighter, and the definition very much 
better than near the level of the sea. 




The Earl of Rosse' s Great Reflecting Telescope. 



THE INVENTION OF THE MICEOSCOPE. 

Sir Dayid Brewster has sagaciously observed that, 
previous to the introduction of glass, the microscopes of 
the present day could not have been constructed, even if 
their theory had been known ; but it seems strange that 
a variety of facts, which must have presented themselves 
to the most careless observer, should not have led to the 
earlier construction of optical instruments. Through the 
spherical drops of water suspended before his eye, an at- 
tentive observer might have seen magnified some minute 
body placed accidentally in its anterior focus ; and in the 
eyes of fishes and quadrupeds, which he uses for his food, 
he might have seen, and might have extracted, the beau- 
tiful lenses which they contain. Had he looked through 
these remarkable lenses and spheres, and had he placed the 
lens of the smallest minnow, or that of the bird, the sheep, 
or the ox, in or before a circular aperture, he would have 
possessed a microscope or microscopes of excellent qual- 
ity, and of diflferent magnifying powers. No such ob- 
servations, however, seem to have been made ; and even 
after the invention of glass, and its conversion into glob- 
ular vessels, through which, when filled with any fiuid, 
objects are magnified, the Microscope remained undis- 
covered. 

The earliest magnifying lens of which we have any 
knowledge was one rudely made of rock-crystal, which 
Mr. Layard found among a number of glass bowls in the 
northwest palace of Nimroud ; but no similar lens has 
been found and described to induce us to believe that 
tjie Microscope, either simple or compound, was invented 
and used as an instrument previous to the commencement 
of the seventeenth century. In the beginning of the first 
century, however, Seneca alludes to the magnifying power 
of a glass globe filled with water ; but as he only states 
that it made small and indistinct letters appear larger 
and more distinct, we can not consider such a casual re- 
mark as the invention of the single microscope, though 



THE EARLIEST MICROSCOPE. 247 

it might have led the observer to try the effect of smaller 
globes, and thus obtain magnifying powers sufficient to 
discover phenomena otherwise invisible. 

Lenses of glass were undoubtedly in existence in the 
time of Pliny ; but at that period, and for many centuries 
afterward, they appear to have been used only as burn- 
ing, or as reading glasses, and no attempt seems to have 
been made to form them of so small a size as to entitle 
them to be regarded even as the precursors of the single 
microscope. 

No person has claimed to be the inventor of the single 
microscope. According to Peter Borell, the Jansens, . 
spectacle-makers at Middleburg, invented the compound 
microscope in 1590, and presented the first instrument to 
Charles Albert, Archduke of Austria. This microscope 
is stated to have been six feet long. The Dutch have 
claimed the invention for Cornelius Drebell, of Alkmaar, 
who resided in London as mathematician to James I. 
Fontana, an Italian, made the same claim for himself; 
Viviani asserts that Galileo, his master, was led to the 
discovery of the microscope from that of the telescope ; 
and the author of the preface to the works of Galileo, 
published at Milan in 1808, states that Galileo invented 
the microscope and the telescope about the same time, 
and that he applied the former to examine objects other- 
wise invisible. The instrument consisted, like the tele- 
scope, of a convex and a concave lens, and also of one 
lens more convex, and exhibited the structure of insects, 
and made visible things of prodigious littleness. It has 
been conjectured that Galileo might have made the mi- 
croscope in imitation of Jansen's, as he did the telescope, 
which is more probable than that he was the original in- 
ventor. 

Neither of these assertions has, however, been proved ; 
and, from these conflicting circumstances, it is obvious 
that no single individual can be considered as the invent- 
or of the microscope. Huyghens is of opinion that the 
single microscope was invented not long after the tele- 
scope ; and, says Sir David Brewster, " as soon as two 
lenses were combined to magnify distant objects, it was 
impossible to overlook their influence in the examination 
of objects that were near, -and it is highly probable that 



248 IMPROVED MICROSCOPES. 

the different individuals whom we have mentioned may- 
have had the merit of inventing, constructing, and using 
the microscope." 

Dr. Hooke was the first person who made a microscope 
from a single sphere of glass, from the twentieth to the 
fiftieth of an inch in diameter, with which many interest- 
ing phenomena may be observed, and even important dis- 
coveries made. Having taken a clear piece of glass. Dr. 
Hooke drew it out, by the heat of a lamp, into threads, 
which he melted into a small round globule ; and this 
sjDhere being ground on a Avhetstone, and then polished 
on a metal plate with tripoli, he placed it against a small 
hole in a thin piece of metal, and fixed it with wax. Thus 
filled up. Dr. Hooke says that " it will both magnify and 
make some objects more distinct than any of the great 
microscopes can do." There have been several improv- 
ers of this single-glass sphere. 

The celebrated Leuwenhoeck, who made so many im- 
portant discoveries with the single miscroscope, was sup- 
posed to have used only glass globules formed by fusion ; 
but Mr. Baker, who had upon his table when he wrote 
the twenty-six microscopes which Leuwenhoeck left as a 
legacy to the Royal Society, informs us that a double 
convex lens, and not a sphere or globule, was in each of 
them. These small lenses are ground and polished by 
the hand, like all other lenses ; and when the radii of 
their surfaces are as one to six, they make very good mi- 
croscopes. Leuwenhoeck placed the lenses between two 
plates of silver perforated with a small hole, and having 
before it a movable pin, upon which to place the object, 
and adjust it to distinct vision. With magnifying pow- 
ers varying from forty to one hundred and sixty, Leu- 
wenhoeck made such important discoveries, that the com- 
pound microscope was laid aside for a time, and super- 
seded in England for many years by the ingenious pock- 
et-microscope of J. Wilcox, which, for nearly three quar- 
ters of a century, was manufactured in England. 

We select these details from a valuable contribution 
by Sir David Brewster to the North British Review^ No. 
50, in which the author gives a popular account of the 
various inventions by which the microscope has been 
brought to its present state of perfection, and become 



IMPKOVED MICROSCOPES. 249 

one of the most valuable instruments in extending almost 
every branch of science. At the commencement of the 
present century no attempt had been made to fit up the 
microscope as an instrument of discovery, and to accom- 
modate it to that particular kind of preparation which is 
required for the preservation and scrutiny of minute ob- 
jects. For a very long period the microscope of Drebell 
served but to astonish the young and amuse the curious ; 
and without greatly detracting from the merits of Leu- 
wenhoeck, and other naturalists who used it, we may 
safely assert that, till it became achromatic by the labors 
of Lister, Ross,* and others, it was not fitted for those 
noble researches in nartual history and physiology in 
which it has performed so important a part. 

* This skillful optician died of heart disease, Sept. 5, 1 859. 
L2 



SIR DAVID BREWSTER'S KALEIDOSCOPE. 

This optical instrument is named from three Greek 
words — Kalon eidos^ a beautiful form, and scopeo^ I see ; 
and it has been extensively applied to the creation and 
exhibition of an infinite variety of perfectly symmetrical 
figures. The idea of the instrument first occurred to Sir 
David Brewster in 1814, when he was engaged in ex- 
periments on the polarization of light by reflections from 
plates of glass. Sir David observed that when two 
planes Avere inclined to one another, and the eye of the 
spectator was nearly in the produced line of the common 
section of their planes, the farther extremities of the plate 
were multiplied by successive reflections, so as to exhibit 
the appearance of a circle divided into sections; also, 
that the several images of a candle near those extremi- 
ties were similarly disposed about a centre. In repeat- 
ing, at a subsequent period, the experiments of M. Biot 
on the action of fluids upon light. Sir David Brewster 
placed the fluids in a trough formed by two plates of 
glass cemented together at an angle ; and the eye being 
necessarily placed at one end, some of the cement, which 
had been passed through between the plates, appeared 
to be arranged into a regular figure. The remarkable 
symmetry which it presented led to the experimenter's 
investigation of the cause of this phenomenon, and in so 
doing he discovered the leading principles of the Kaleid- 
oscope. 

The first Kaleidoscopes constructed by Brewster con- 
sisted simply of two plane mirrors of glass, having their 
posterior surfaces blackened, in order to prevent any re- 
flection of light from them, and fixed in a cylindrical 
tube. The objects were pieces of variously-colored glass, 
attached to the farther ends of the mirrors, and project- 
ing on the sectional space between them ; or the objects 
were placed between two very thin plates of glass, and 
held by the hand or fixed in a cell at the end of the 
tube : in some cases, these plates were moved across the 



THE KALEIDOSCOPE. 251 

field of view, and in others they were made to turn round 
upon the axis of the tube. The pieces of colored glass, 
or other objects which were situated in the section, were, 
by the different reflections, made to appear in all the other 
sections, and thus the field of view presented the appear- 
ance of an entire object or pattern, all the parts of which 
were disposed with the most perfect symmetry. By 
moving the glass plates between which the objects were 
contained, the pattern was made to vary in form ; and 
pleasing varieties in the tints were produced by moving 
the instrument so that the light of the sky or of a lamp 
might fall on the objects in different directions. 

The inventor subsequently found means to obtain 
multiplied images of such objects as flowers, trees, and 
even persons or things in motion, and thus the import- 
ance of the instrument was greatly increased. For this 
purpose he caused the two mirrors to be fixed in a tube 
as before, but this tube was contained in another, from 
which, like the eye-tube of a telescope, it could be drawn 
at pleasure toward the eye : at the opposite end of the 
exterior tube was fixed a glass lens of* convenient focal 
length, by which were formed images of different objects 
in the upper section, and which, being multiplied by suc- 
cessive reflections from the mirrors, produced in theTSeld 
of view symmetrical patterns of great beauty. The 
properties of the instrument have been greatly extend- 
ed ; and when it is constructed so that there may be pro- 
jected on a screen a magnified image of the whole pat- 
tern, and the tube is supported on a ball-and-socket joint, 
the figures in its field may be easily sketched by a skill- 
ful artist, and great assistance thus obtained in designing 
beautiful patterns. 

Sir David Brewster obtained a patent for his Kaleido- 
scope, and opticians were duly authorized by him to ex- 
ecute and sell them. The public did not, however, ade- 
quately encourage the manufacture of instruments of a 
superior kind, which, moreover, were expensive ; while, 
in violation of the patent, imitations of the Kaleidoscope, 
rudely and inaccurately constructed, were sold at low 
prices by unprincipled persons. It is calculated that not 
less than 200,000 Kaleidoscopes were sold in three months 
in London and Paris ; though, out of this number. Sir 



252 THE KALEIDOSCOPE. 

David Brewster says, not jDerhaps 1000 were constructed 
upon scientific principles, or were capable of giving any 
thing like a correct idea of the power of his Kaleido- 
scope ; so that the inventor gained little beyond fame, 
though the large sale of the imperfect instrument must 
have produced considerable profit. The efiects of the 
instrument have been rendered highly useful in the in- 
dustrial arts, especially in suggesting patterns for car- 
pets, and other products of the loom. 

The writer well remembers, in 1814-15, in a large 
school, the avidity with which pseudo- Kaleidoscopes 
were formed of pasteboard cylinders, blackened planes 
of glass, and pieces of colored glass, when the fantastic 
variety of the results obtained by this rude means scarce- 
ly foreshadowed the symmetrical beauty of the forms 
subsequently obtained by more exact methods. To the 
school-boy of five-and-forty years since, the making of 
the Kaleidoscope was nearly as popular a recreation as is 
the photographic art to the tyi'o of the present day. 



MAGIC MIEEOES AND BUENING LENSES. 

The famous mirror which Ptolemy Euergetes caused 
to be placed in the Pharos at Alexandria belongs to the 
first class. This mirror is stated by ancient authors to 
*have represented accurately every thing which was trans- 
acted throughout all Egypt, both on water and on land. 
Some writers aflirm that upon its surface an enemy's fleet 
could be seen at the distance of 600,000 paces; others 
say more than 100 leagues ! Abulfeda, in his description 
of Egypt, states this mirror to have been of " Chinese 
iron," which Buffon considers to mean polished steel; 
but a writer in the PhilosopMcal Magazine^ 1805, sup- 
poses the metal to have been tutenag^ a Chinese metallic 
compound capable of receiving the highest polish. The 
existence of Ptolemy's mirror has, however, been gen- 
erally treated as a fiction ; but Father Abbat, in his 
Amusemens Philosophiques^ first pubhshed at Marseilles 
in 1763, considers that it may have been at the time the 
only mirror of its kind, and, being a great wonder, its 
effects may have been greatly exaggerated ; making al- 
lowance for which, nothing remains " but that at some 
distance, provided nothing was interposed between the 
objects and the mirror, those objects were seen more dis- 
tinctly than with the naked eye ; and that with the mir- 
ror many objects were seen which, because of their dis- 
tance, were imperceptible without it." 

It is certain that, under some circumstances, objects 
may be seen at a much greater distance than is gener- 
ally supposed. Thus it is stated that the Isle of Man is 
clearly visible from the summit of Ben Lomond, in Scot- 
land, or 120 miles distant. Brydone states that from the 
summit of Etna mountains 200 miles off* may be distin- 
guished; and during his visit to Teneriffe in 1856, Mr. 
Piazzi Smyth saw objects at a much greater distance. 

Burning Mirrors have been celebrated on account of 
their size and extraordinary effects. One of these optical 



254 GREAT BURNING LENS. 

machines was the work of Stettala, a canon of Milan ; it 
was parabolic, and, acting as a burning-glass, inflamed 
wood at the distance of fifteen or sixteen paces. Leonard 
Digges, in his Pantometria^ 1571, states that "with a 
glasse framed by a revolution of a section parabolicall, I 
have set fire to powder half a mile and more distant." 
In the prosecution of this subject, the celebrated IN'apier 
and Sir Isaac Newton experimented with parabolic re- 
flectors before 1673. Yilette, an artist and optician of 
Lyons, constructed three mirrors about the year 1670:^ 
one of these, which was purchased by the King of France, 
was thirty inches in diameter, and of about three feet 
focus. The rays of the sun were collected by it into the 
space of about one inch. It immediately set fire to the 
greenest wood ; it fused silver and copper in a few sec- 
onds ; and in one minute vitrified brick and flint earth. 
A mirror, superior even to these, was constructed by 
Baron von Tchivnhausen about 1687: it consisted of a 
metal plate, twice as thick as the blade of a common 
knife ; it was five feet three inches in breadth, and its 
focal distance was three feet six inches. It produced the 
following eflfects : wood, exposed to its focus, immediate- 
ly took fire ; copper and silver passed into fusion in a few 
minutes ; and slate was transformed into a kind of black 
glass, which, when laid hold of with a pair of pincers, 
could be drawn out into filaments. Pumice-stone and 
fragments of crucibles, which had withstood the most 
violent furnaces, were also vitrified. 

The burning lens constructed by Mr. Parker many 
years since, at an expense of upward of £7000, Avas of 
flint-glass, 3 feet in diameter, and weighed 212 pounds; 
the focal length being 6 feet 8 inches, and the diameter 
of the focus 1 inch. To concentrate the rays still farther, 
a second lens was used, and reduced the diameter of the 
focus to half an inch. Under this lens every kind of wood 
took fire in an instant, Avhether hard or green, or even 
soaked in water. Thin iron plates grew hot in an instant, 
and then melted. Tiles, slates, and all kinds of earth, 
were instantly vitrified. Sulphur, pitch, and all resinous 
bodies melted under water. Fir-wood, exposed to the 
focus under water, did not seem changed ; but when 
broken, the inside was burnt to a coal. Any metal 



GREAT BURNING LENS. 255 

whatever, inclosed in charcoal, melted in a moment, the 
fire sparkling like that of a forge. When copper was 
melted, and thrown down quickly into cold water, it pro- 
duced so violent a shock as to break the strongest earthen 
vessels, and the copper was entirely dissipated. Though 
the heat of the focus was so intense as to melt gold in a 
few seconds, yet there was so little heat at a short dis- 
tance from the focus that the finger might be placed an 
inch from it without injury. Mr. Parker, having put his 
finger at the focus to try the sensation, found it not to 
resemble that produced by fire or a lighted candle, but 
like that of a sharp cut with a lancet. 



DISCOVERY OF THE PLANET NEPTUNE. 

** Nothing in the whole history of astronomy can be compared to 
this." — The Astronomer Royal, 

Sir Dayid Brewster, in his admirable summary of 
the important discoveries in physical astronomy which 
illustrated the century that followed the publication of 
I^ewton's Principia^ remarks that, " Brilliant as they are, 
and evincing as they do the highest genius, yet the cen- 
tury in which we live has been rendered remarkable by 
a discovery which, whether we view it in its theoretical 
relations or in its practical results, is the most remarkable 
in the history of physical astronomy. In the motions of 
the planet Uranus, discovered since the time of Newton, 
astronomers had been for a long time perplexed with 
certain irregularities, which could not be deduced from 
the action of the other planets. M. Bouvard, who con- 
structed tables of this planet, seeing the impossibility of 
reconciling the ancient with the modern observations, 
threw out the idea that the irregularities from which this 
discrepancy arose might be owing to the action of an- 
other planet. Our countryman, the Rev. Dr. Hussey, 
conceived ' the possibility of some disturbing body be- 
yond Uranus ;' and Hanson, with whom Bouvard corre- 
sponded on the subject, was of ojDinion that there must 
be two new planets beyond Tlranus^ to account for the 
irregularities. In 1834 Dr. Hussey was anxious that the 
Astronomer Royal should assist him in detecting the in- 
visible planet ; and other astronomers expressed the same 
desire to have so important a question examined and set- 
tled. On liis return to Berlin from the meeting of the 
British Association in 1846, the celebrated astronomer, 
M. Bessel, commenced the task of determining the actual 
position of the planet ; but, in consequence of the death 
of M. Flemming, the young German astronomer to whom 
he had intrusted some of his preliminary calculations, and 
of his own death not long afterward, the inquiry was 
stopped. 



DISCO YERY OF THE PLANET NEPTUNE. 257 

" While the leading astronomers in Europe were thus 
• thinking and talking about the possible existence of a 
new planet beyond the orbit of Uranus, two young as- 
tronomers (Mr. Adams, of St. John's College, Cambridge, 
and M. Leverrier, of Paris) were diligently engaged in 
attempting to deduce from the irregularities which it 
produced in the motions of Uranus the elements of the 
planet's orbit, and its actual position in the heavens. In 
October, 1845, Mr. Adams solved this intricate problem 
— the inverse probletn of perturbations^^ as it has been 
called — placing beyond a doubt the theoretical existence 
of the planet, and assigning to it a place in the heavens 
which was afterward found to be little more than a sin- 
gle degree from its exact place ! Anxious for the dis- 
covery of the planet in the heavens, Mr. Adams com- 
municated his results to the Astronomer Royal and Pro- 
fessor Challis, but more than nine months were allowed 
to pass away before a single telescope was directed in 
search of it to the heavens. On the 29th of July, Pro-, 
fessor ChaHis began his observations ; and on the 4th 
and 12th of August, when he directed his telescope to 
the theoretical place of the planet as given him by Mr. 
Adams, he sate the planet, and obtained two positions 
of it. 

" While Mr. Adams was engaged in this important in- 
quiry, M. Leverrier — who had distinguished himself by a 
series of valuable memoirs on the great inequality of Pal- 
las, on the perturbations of Mercury, and on the rectifi- 
cations of the orbits of comets — was busily occupied with 
the same problem. In the summer of 1845, M. Arago 
represented to Leverrier the importance of studying the 
perturbations of Uranus, which suggestion he followed ; 
and on November 10, 1845, submitted to the Academy 
of Science his First Memoir on the Theory of Uranus, 
and in the following June his Second Memoir, in which, 

^ ** The solution of the inverse problem of disturbing forces has led 
Leverrier and Adams to the discovery of a new planet merely by the 
deductions from the manner in which the motions of an old one arc 
affected ; and its orbit has been so calculated that observers could find 
it — nay, its disk, as measured by them, only varies l-1200th of a de- 
gree from the amount given by the theory." — Lo7'd Brougham's In- 
augural Address on the erection of a Statue of Sir Isaac Newton at 
Grantham^ 1858. 



258 DISCOVERY OF THE PLANET NEPTUNE. 

after examining the different hypotheses that had been 
adduced to explain the irregularities of that planet, he is 
driven to the conclusion that they are due to the action 
of a planet situated in the ecliptic at a 7nean distance 
double that of Uranus, He then proceeds to determine 
where this planet is actually situated, what is its mass, 
and what are the elements of the orbit which it describes. 
After giving a rigorous solution of this problem, and 
showing that there are not two quarters of the heavens 
in which we can place the planet at a given epoch, he 
computes its heliocentric place on the 1st of January, 
1847, which he finds to be in the 325th degree of longi- 
tude ; and he boldly asserts that in assigning to it this 
place, he does not commit an error of more than 10^. 
The position thus given to it is within a degree of that 
found by Mr. Adams. Anxious, like Mr. Adams, for the 
actual discovery of the planet, M. Leverrier naturally ex- 
pected that practical astronomers would exert themselves 
in searching for it. The place which he assigned to it 
was published on the 1st of June, and yet no attempt 
seems to have been made to find it for nearly five months. 
The exact position of the planet was published on the 
31st of August, and on the 13th of September was com- 
municated to M. Galle, of the Royal Observatory of Ber- 
lin, who discovered it as a star of the eighth magnitude 
the very evening on which he received the request to 
look for it. Professor Challis had secured the discovery 
of this remarkable body six weeks before, but the honor 
of having actually found it belongs to the Prussian as- 
tronomer. With the universal concurrence of the as- 
tronomical world, the new planet received the name of 
Neptune. It revolves round the sun in 1V2 years, at a 
mean distance of thirty, that of Uranus being nineteen, 
and that of the Earth one ; and by its discovery the Solar 
System has been extended one thousand millions of miles 
beyond its former limits. 

" The honor of having made this discovery (continues 
Sir David Brewster most emphatically) belongs equally 
to Adams and Leverrier. It is the greatest intellectual 
achievement in the annals of astronomy, and the noblest 
triumph of the Newtonian Philosophy. To detect a 
planet by the eye, or to track it to its place by the mind, 



DISCOVERY OF THE PLANET NEPTUNE. 259 

are acts as incommensurable as those of muscular and in- 
tellectual power. Recumbent on his easy-chair, the 
practical astronomer has but to look through the cleft in 
his revolving cupola in order to trace the pilgrim star in 
its course, or, by the application of magnifying power, to 
expand its tiny disk, and thus transfer it from its sidereal 
companions to the planetary dominions. The physical 
astronomer, on the contrary, has no such auxiliaries : he 
calculates at noon, when the stars disappear under a 
meridian sun ; he computes at midnight, when clouds 
and darkness shroud the heavens ; and from within that 
cerebral dome, which has no opening heavenward, and 
no instrument but the Eye of Reason, he sees in the dis- 
turbing agencies of an unseen planet, upon a planet by 
him equally unseen, the existence of the disturbing agent; 
and from the nature and amount of its action, he computes 
its magnitude and indicates its place. If man has ever 
been permitted to see otherwise than by the eye, it is 
when the clairvoyance of reason, piercing through screens 
of epidermis and walls of bone, grasps, amid the ab- 
stractions of number and of quality, those sublime re- 
alities which have eluded the keenest touch and evaded 
the sharpest eye."* 

* We are indebted for the above excellent precis of this great dis- 
covery to Sir David Brewster's Life of Sir Isaac Neivton, vol. i., p. 
366-370. 



PALISSY THE POTTER. 

The production of enameled Pottery from native ma- 
terials in France is strikingly commemorated in the kind 
of ware which may be said to be peculiar to that country, 
and is known as Palissy Ware, There is a good deal of 
embellishment mixed up with the life of the inventor of 
this ware, '' and his adventures, real or imaginary, have 
assisted in multiplying the numbers of those dangerous 
books which ascribe imaginary events to real characters."* 
There is, however, enough of truth in the life of Palissy 
to awaken our sympathies, and excite our admiration of 
his works, which represent the most interesting epoch in 
the history of his art, while his personal life is a romance. 

Bernard Palissy was born at La Chapelle-Biron, a vil- 
lage in the old diocese of Agen, at the commencement 
of the sixteenth century. His parents were poor, but 
they had him taught reading and writing. A land-sur- 
veyor, who had come to Agen to lay down a plan of that 
part of the country, remarked the boy Bernard's quick- 
ness, and the attention with which he watched his oper- 
ations, and by his parents' consent took him away with 
him to teach him his business. His progress in practical 
geometry Avas so rapid that he mapped out districts be- 
fore he had ended his apprenticeship. In the intervals 
of employment he was much given to the study of the 
Italian masters : he was delighted to paint images and de- 
signs on glass, and, as his name became known, he was 
commissioned to adorn churches and the castles of the no- 
bles. This enabled him to gratify his taste for traveling 
and for studying natural objects. Nature had implanted 
in him a love of the beautiful, which became his teacher. 
Meanwhile, he became acquainted with the chemistry 
and mineralogy of his day, such as it was. He did not, 
however, profit so largely as he might have done by the 
state of knowledge in his time. He had the failing, so 
common with practical men, of inveighing against theory ; 
* Charles Tomlinson ; Encyclopaedia Britaiinica, 8th edit. 



PALISSY THE POTTER. 261 

yet, in the only work which he has left on the subject of 
his art, he is obscure in the few practical details which 
he gives, and has mixed them up with, theories of his 
own, which only prove how much painful toil and how 
many abortive experiments he would have been spared 
had he consulted those who were qualified to inform him 
of the true principles of physical and chemical sciences 
applicable to his researches.* 

In 1539 Palissy quitted Bis native village, and settled as 
an artist at Saintes, where he married. Here his modes 
of obtaining a livelihood became less profitable, and em- 
ployment was often not to be had. He filled up his time 
with the indulgence of scientific theories, but felt within 
him the working of energies which had not yet been call- 
ed into full action. While in this state of mind, a beau- 
tifully enameled cup, which had probably been made at 
Faenza, in Italy, fell into his hands. Struck with its beau- 
ty, he set about inquiring into its mode of manufacture 
and the secrets of its composition, especially the enamel. 
He undertook a course of experiments on the subject, 
but without success : he burnt the clay itself, mixed it 
with various ingredients, covered it with ever-varying 
preparations, and tried them, with renewed hopes, in the 
furnaces of glaziers and potters, but without success. He 
then built for himself a furnace, which he ultimately de- 
molished and rebuilt; for this, he found, would be his 
main dependence. In those days, a man of genius, which 
placed him greatly in advance of his neighbors, was al- 
most sure to be suspected of sorcery, and Palissy's friends 
began to look upon him with terror ; others imagined 
him to be a coiner of false money, and others thought 
him to be insane. 

The desire to master his object had now taken such 
possession of Palissy, that for several years he devoted 
nearly all his time and means to its pursuit, in spite of 
the claims of his wife and family, and the remonstrances 
of his friends. He has described with bitter feeling the 
conflict in his own breast at this time ; yet he bore out- 
wardly a cheerful countenance, and strove to inspire his 
family with the confidence he himself felt, that he should 
one day place them in afiluence by his success, and thus 
* Dr. Lardner on *' The Potter's Art." 



262 PALISSY THE POTTER. 

overpay them for all the privations they were enduring. 
Fifteen years thus passed away. Palissy was still firm 
in his conviction, yet had not succeeded ; but nothing 
short of producing enamel in all its perfection would sat- 
isfy him. One day, when he thought himself on the point 
of attaining the great object of his life, a workman, on 
leaving him, demanded the wages that were due to him : 
^ Palissy had no money, and paid him with the few clothes 
he had left. He had now to work alone — to prepare his 
colors, and to heat and watch the furnace which his own 
hands had made. Once more he was on the verge of 
success : he placed in his oven a vase, on which his hopes 
were centred, and ran for wood to feed the fire : it w^as 
all consumed. He stood for a moment overwhelmed 
with despair ; then rushing into his garden, he tore up 
the trellis-work that supported his fruit-trees, broke it in 
pieces, and heated his furnace. Up sprang the flame, 
and then sank into the deep-red glow which promised 
the realization of his hopes ; again the fire was nearly ex- 
hausted, when he broke into pieces his chairs and tables, 
then the door, next the window-frames, and at last the 
very flooring of his house — to feed the furnace. This was 
Palissy's final eflbrt, and his triumph. He shouted with 
joy as he showed his wife and children the vase he had 
just taken out of the furnace ; it was bright with the im- 
perishable colors that till then he had only seen in dreams 
since he had first beheld the cujd of Faenza. 

This was in the year 1550. He had now discovered 
the composition of various enamels, and it was not long 
before his beautiful works found their way into all parts 
of France. The king, Henri H., commissioned Palissy to 
execute certain vases and figures to adorn his palace gar- 
den ; he sent for the potter to Paris, gave him apart- 
ments in the Tuileries, with a patent, which set forth that 
he was the inventor of a new kind of pottery; and, un- 
der the patronage of the king, the queen, Catharine de' 
Medici, and the Constable Montmorency, Palissy was 
known at Paris by no other name than that of Bernard 
de Tuileries. He was employed by the Duke of Mont- 
morency to decorate the Chateau d'Ecouen ; and one of 
the finest existing specimens of Palissy Ware is a flask 
which bears the Montmorency arms. 




Bernard Paltssy, tfie Pottkr. 







Wedgwood's early Pottery at Burslem. 



PALISSY WAKE. 265 

Palissy's^^^^^?^^^65, or rustic pottery, became the fash- 
ion of the day, and his beautiful designs were every 
where admired. The general style of this ware is mark- 
ed by quaintness and singularity. While the forms are 
in general correct and pure, there is no painting, proper- 
ly so called. The figures are given in colored relief, and 
the enamel is hard and brilliant. The colors are usually 
bright, and mostly yellows, blues, and grays, sometimes 
extending to green, violet, and brown ; but no fine white, 
nor any tint of red. He is considered " a great master 
of the power and effect of neutral tints." His pieces rus- 
tiques^ intended to adorn the large sideboards, or dress- 
ers^ of the dining-halls of the period, and the dishes and 
plateaux for the same purpose, and not for the table, are 
loaded with figures in rehef. A favorite object with him 
was also a flat kind of basin, representing the bottom of 
the sea, with fishes, shells, se^- weeds, pebbles, snakes, 
etc. ; and among his works are ewers and vases gro- 
tesquely ornamented, boars' heads, curious salt-cellars, 
figures of saints, wall and floor tiles.* 

The natural objects represented on the pieces of Palis- 
sy are remarkable for truth of form and color, having 
been, with the exception of certain leaves, moulded from 
nature. He was more or less a naturalist : his shells are 
all tertiary fossil shells from the Paris basin; the fishes 
are those of the Seine ; and the reptiles, a prevailing sub- 
ject, those of the banks of the same river. He made 
use of no foreign natural production. He must be ad- 
mired as well for the beauty as for the utility of his dis- 
covery. It was to him that France owed her high rank 
in the ceramic art. He formed the first cabinet of 
natural history collected in France ; and he lectured on 
botany, chemistry, and agriculture before learned schol- 
ars. He wrote, though he knew neither Latin nor Greek, 
in a style which reminds one of Montaigne. In his Traite 

* In the Bernal Collection, dispersed in 1855, was an extremely 
rare specimen of Palissy Ware — a circular dish on a foot, a lizard iii 
the centre, and a very rich border, twelve and a half inches in diam- 
eter. This was purchased in a broken state at Paris for twelve francs, 
and after being admirably restored in England, was sold to Mr. Ber- 
nal for four pounds. At his sale, this very fine specimen brought £162. 
It is now in the collection of Baron Gustave de Rothschild. Very fine 
imitations of Palissy Ware are made in Staffordshire by the Mintons. 

M 



266 HEROISM OF PALISSY. 

de r Art de Terre^ he tells the sad story of his twenty 
years' anxiety, labor, and privation with touching truth- 
fulness ; the unparalleled difficulties he encountered, the 
sacrifices he made, the sufferings he endured, and his 
obstinate perseverance, amounted to a sort of heroism. 

He tells us, in words of religious truth, the mainspring 
of his hope throughout this long probation. " I have 
found nothing better," he says, " than to observe the 
counsel of God, His edicts, statutes, and ordinances; and 
in regard to His will, I have seen that He has command- 
ed His followers to eat bread by the labor of their bodies, 
and to multiply the talents which he has committed to 
them." The heroism which Palissy showed in the pur- 
suit of his art he evinced in his religious faith ; and on 
Sunday mornings he would assemble four or five " sim- 
ple and unlearned men" for religious worship, and exhort 
them to good works. Such was " the beginning of the 
Reformed Church of the town of Saintes." Some time 
after, when the place was assailed by the fierce opponents 
of the Reformers, the workshop of Palissy was broken 
into by the mob, and the poor potter sought shelter in a 
corner, but, being discovered, was dragged to a dungeon 
at Bordeaux. Here he would have perished on the 
gallows but that his country might thereby lose his valu- 
able art. 

The character of this great improver of Pottery was 
strongly marked, not only by patience, perseverance, and 
sagacity, but also by moral firmness and unshaken recti- 
tude. He lived in troublous times, and, being a consci- 
entious Protestant, he unhesitatingly avowed his religious 
opinions, even in his discourses on art. He had warmly 
embraced the principles of the Reformation ; he was 
arrested at the time of the first edict against Protestants, 
framed at Ecouen by Henri H. in 1559; he recovered 
his liberty through the intercession of the Constable of 
Montmorency with the Queen, and through the same 
powerful protection Palissy escaped from the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew. He, however, thus escaped un- 
scathed to endure greater sufferings. In his ninetieth 
year he was again accused of heresy, and, refusing to 
renounce his opinions, he was thrown into the Bastile. 
There he was visited by Henri IH. " My good man," 



HEROISM OF PALISSY. 267 

said the king, " if you can not conform yourself on the 
matter of religion, I shall be compelled to leave you in 
the hands of my enemies." " Sire," replied the venerable 
old man, " I was already willing to surrender my life, and 
could any regret have accompanied the action, it must 
assuredly have vanished upon hearing the great King of 
France say ' I am compelled.' This, sire, is a condition 
to which those who force you to act contrary to your 
own good disposition can never reduce me, because I am 
prepared for death, and because your whole people have 
not the power to compel a single potter to bend his 
knees before images which he has made." 

And so Palissy, to the eternal disgrace of the monarch 
and the priests, and of his country, whose art he had so 
signally ennobled, was detained in the Bastile, where he 
died, at little short of a hundred years of age. 

The high moral firmness and unshaken rectitude of 
Bernard Palissy must ever command the admiration of 
mankind. No example can be found of one to whom 
the following lines of Horace (translated by Francis) are 
more truly applicable : 

**The man, in conscious virtue bold, 
Who dares his secret purpose hold, 
Unshaken hears the crowd's tumultuous cries, 
And th' impetuous tyrant's angry brow defies." 



JOSIAH WEDGWOOD AND HIS WARES. 

Few men have labored so successfully to refine and 
elevate his art as Josiah Wedgwood, " the Father of the 
Potteries," and the first of a long succession of Stafibrd- 
shire potters, who have applied the highest science and 
the purest art to the improvement of their commercial 
enterprise. 

Wedgwood was born on the 12th of July, 1730, at 
Burslem, in Stafibrdshire, and was the son of a poor pot- 
ter. His education was very limited ; for " scarcely any 
person in Burslem learned more than mere reading and 
writing until about 1750, when some individuals endow- 
ed the free-school, for instructing youth to read the Bi- 
ble, write a fair hand, and know the primary rules of 
arithmetic." Wedgwood had little time for self-improve- 
ment, since at the age of eleven years he worked in his 
elder brother's pottery as thrower^ his father being then 
dead. The small-pox, which left an incurable lameness 
in his right leg, so as afterward to require amputation, 
compelled him to relinquish the potter's wheel. After a 
time he left Burslem for Stoke, where his talent for the 
production of ornamental pottery first developed itself. 
He next, in partnership with one Wheildon, manufac- 
tured knife-handles in imitation of agate and tortoise- 
shell, melon table-plates, green-pickle leaves, and similar 
articles. But Wheildon had little taste for the new 
branches of art-manufacture for which Wedgwood had 
so great a predilection ; he therefore returned to Burs- 
lem in 1759, and set up for himself, in a small thatched 
manufactory, where he continued to make ornamental 
articles. He prospered, and soon took a second manu- 
factory, where he made white stone-ware ; and a third, 
at which he produced the improved cream-colored ware 
by Avhich he gained so much celebrity. Of this new 
ware Wedgwood presented some articles to Queen Char- 
lotte, who thereupon ordered a complete table-service, 
and was so pleased with its execution as to appoint 



WEDGWOOD WARE. 269 

Wedgwood her potter, and to command that the ware 
should be called " Queen's Ware." It has a dense and 
durable substance, covered with a brilliant glaze, and is 
capable of bearing uninjured sudden alternations of heat 
and cold. It was from the first sold at a cheap rate, and 
the addition of embellishments very little enhanced the 
cost: first a colored edge or painted border was added 
to the Queen's Ware, and lastly printed patterns, which 
covered the whole surface. Nor was this beautiful ware 
confined to England ; for M. Faujas de Saint Fond shows 
how widely the fame of Wedgwood's pottery had spread 
before 1792, when, ''in traveling from Paris to Peters- 
burg, from Amsterdam to the farthest part of Sweden, 
and from Dunkirk to the extremity of the south of 
France, one is served at every inn upon English ware. 
Spain, Portugal, and Italy are supplied with it ; and ves- 
sels are loaded with it for the East Indies, the West In- 
dies, and the continent of America." England is mainly 
indebted to Wedgwood for the extraordinary improve- 
ment and rapid extension of this branch of industry. 
Before his time our potteries produced only inferior fab- 
rics, easily broken or injured, and totally devoid of taste 
as to form or ornament. 

Wedgwood's success was not the result of any fortu- 
nate discovery, accidentally made, but was due to patient 
investigation and unremitting efibrts. He called upon a 
higher class of men than was usually employed in this 
manufacture to assist in his labors, and in prosecuting his 
experiments he was guided by sound scientific principles. 
In partnership with Bentley (a descendant of the cele- 
brated scholar, Richard Bentley), Wedgwood now de- 
voted himself to the higher branches of his manufacture, 
and succeeded in obtaining from eminent patrons of art 
the loan of specimens of sculpture, vases, cameos, intagl- 
ios, medallions, and seals, suitable for imitation by some 
of the processes he had introduced. He obtained for 
this purpose valuable sets of Oriental porcelain ; and Sir 
William Hamilton lent specimens of ancient art from 
Herculaneum, of which Wedgwood's ingenious workmen 
produced the most accurate and beautiful copies. Mean- 
while the Portland or Barberini Vase was oftercd for 
sale, and Wedgwood, with the view of copying it, en- 



2*70 THE PORTLAND YASE. 

deAVored to purchase it, and for some time continued to 
offer an advance upon each bidding of the Duchess of 
Portland, until at length, his motives being ascertained, 
he was offered the loan of the vase on condition of vrith- 
drawing his opposition ; consequently, the duchess became 
the purchaser, at the price of 1800 guineas. Wedgwood 
then made fifty copies of the vase, which he sold at 50 
guineas each : he is said to have paid £400 for the mod- 
el, and the entire cost of producing the coj)ies is stated 
to have exceeded the amount of the sum received by 
him. Sir Joseph Banks and Sir Joshua Reynolds bore 
testimony to the excellent execution of these copies, 
which were chased by a steel rifle, after the bas-relief 
had been wholly or partially fired. 

The Portland Vase is composed of two layers of vitrified paste or 
glass, one white, the other blue, so perfect an imitation of an onyx 
cameo that it was long regarded as a natural production. It was dis- 
covered about the middle of the tenth century, and said to be many 
centuries earlier, and of Greek workmanship. It has been deposited 
in the British Museum since 1810. It was exhibited in a small room 
of the old Museum buildings until Feb. 7, 1845, when it was wantonly 
dashed to pieces by a fanatic ; but the fragments being gathered up, 
the vase has been restored by Mr. Doubleday so beautifully that a 
blemish can scarcely be detected. The vase is now kept in the Medal 
Room at the Museum. The mode in which it was manufactured was 
not known until it was broken, and it is now considered as satisfactory 
proof that the making of glass was carried on to a high state of per- 
fection by the ancients. One of Wedgwood's copies of the Portland 
Vase was sold in 1859 for above 200 guineas. 

Flaxman, the greatest English sculptor, was largely 
employed by Wedgwood in the preparation of models 
for the beautiful works of art which he was the first, in 
modern times, to execute in pottery. By numerous ex- 
periments upon various kinds of clay and coloring sub- 
stances, he succeeded in producing the most delicate 
cameos, medalHons, and miniature pieces of sculpture, in 
a substance so extremely hard that they appear hkely to 
exceed even the bronzes of antiquity in durability. An- 
other important discovery made by him was that of 
painting on vases without the glossy appearance of or- 
dinary painting on porcelain or earthenware; an art 
which was practiced by the ancient Etruscans, but which 
appears to have been lost since the time of Pliny. The 
indestructibiUty of some of his wares rendered them ex- 



Wedgwood's ikveisttions. 271 

tremely valuable in the formation of chemical vessels, 
particularly those opposed to the action of acids. The 
fame of Wedgwood's operations was such, that his works 
at Burslem, and subsequently at Etruria, a village built 
by him near Newcastle-under-Lyne, and to which he re- 
moved in 1771, became a point of attraction to visitors 
from all parts of Europe. 

Wedgwood's more beautiful inventions were a terra 
cotta^ which could be made to resemble porphyry, gran- 
ite, Egyptian pebble, and other beautiful stones of the 
siliceous or crystalline kind ; a black porcelainous biscuit 
called basaltes; a white and a cane-colored porcelain bis- 
cuit, smooth and wax-like ; and another white porcelain- 
ous biscuit, which receives color from metallic oxides 
like glass on enamel in fusion. This property renders it 
applicable to the production of cameos, and all subjects 
required to be shown in bas-relief, as the ground can be 
made of any color, while the raised figures are of the 
purest white. Mr. Wedgwood likewise invented a por- 
celain biscuit nearly as hard as agate, which will resist 
the action of all corrosive substances, and is consequently 
well adapted for mortars in the chemist's laboratory. 

Wedgwood's inventions greatly increased the number 
of persons employed in the Potteries, and improved them 
by mechanical contrivance and arrangement, his private 
manufactory having had, for thirty years and upward, 
all the efficacy of a public work of experiment. In 1785, 
Wedgwood stated in evidence before a committee of the 
House of Commons that from 15,000 to 20,000 persons 
were then employed in the Potteries, with much greater 
numbers in digging coals for them, and, in various parts 
of England and Ireland, in digging flints and clay for the 
earthenware manufacture, 50,000 or 60,000 tons of those 
materials being annually conveyed to Staffordshire by 
coasting and inland navigation. 

In addition to the attention displayed by Wedgwood 
on the manufacture inseparably connected with his name, 
he displayed great public spirit in the encouragement of 
various useful schemes. By his exertions, and the en- 
gineering skill of Brindley, was completed the Trent and 
Mersey Canal, by which water communication was estab- 
lished between the Pottery district of Staffordshire and 



272 Wedgwood's inventioin^s. 

the coasts of Devonshire, Dorsetshire, and Kent, whence 
some of the materials of the manufactm-e are derived. 
Wedgwood also planned and carried into execution a 
turnpike road ten miles in length through the Potteries. 
He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society 
of Antiquities ; he also invented a pyrometer, which, as a 
measure of expansion by heat, has not been surpassed. 
He made the most liberal use of his ample fortune. He 
died at Etruria in 1795, in his sixty-fifth year; and, al- 
though he had so largely contributed to the prosperity 
of his countrymen, it was not until more than sixty years 
after his decease that any fitting memorial of this eminent 
public benefactor was decided on. In 1859 it was re- 
solved to erect at Stoke a statue of the great potter, 
holding in his hand the Portland Vase. 

Wedgwood had many English imitators : he has even 
been imitated abroad, especially at Sevres, Dresden, and 
Vienna. 



JAMES WATT AND THE STEAM-ENGINE. 

Before we attempt an outline of the great discoveries 
of this scientific benefactor, it may be interesting to 
glance at the earliest employment of the mighty power 
of Steam, which carries us back to a remote classic age. 
It appears that the ascending vapor of fluids, as well as 
their downward tendency, was summoned by the ancients 
to the aid of superstition. Anthemius of Tralles, the 
architect of Justinian, being desirous to annoy the orator 
Zeno, his neighbor and his enemy, conducted steam in 
leather tubes from concealed boilers, and made them pass 
through the partition-wall to beneath the beams which 
supported the ceilings of Zeno's house. When the cal- 
drons were made to boil, the ceilings shook as if they 
had been shaken by an earthquake. 

Another example of the application of steam to the 
purposes of imposture is given by Tollius. History in- 
forms us that on the banks of the Weser, Busteric, the 
god of the ancient Teutons, sometimes exhibited his dis- 
pleasure by a clap of thunder, which was succeeded by a 
cloud that filled the sacred precincts. The image of the 
god was made of metal, and the head, which was hollow, 
contained an ampliora (nine English gallons) of water. 
Wedges of wood shut up the apertures at the mouth and 
eyes : while buriiing coals, artfully placed in a cavity of 
the head, gradually heated the liquid. In a short tii^ie 
the generated steam forced out the wedges with a loud 
noise, and then escaped in three jets, raising a thick cloud 
between the god and his astonished worshipers. In the 
Middle Ages the monks availed themselves of this inven- 
tion, and the steam bust was put in requisition even be- 
fore Christian worshipers. 

The entry among the manuscripts of Leonardo da 
Vinci of the Architonnere of Archimedes, or the appa- 
ratus of a steam-gun, has been already noticed, in the 
sketch of the DiscoA^eries of Leonardo, at page 131. 

M2 



274 THE uEOLOPILE. 

The^oIo2nIe^ or Ball of ^olus, was another ancient 
application of steam. It consisted of a hollow globe of 
metal, with a long neck, terminating with a very small 
orifice, which, being filled with water, and placed on a 
fire, exhibited the steam, as it was generated by the 
heat, rushing apparently with great force through the 
narrow opening. A common tea-kettle is, in fact, a sort 
of ^olopile. The ancients applied the current of steam, 
as it issued from the spout, to propel the vanes of a mill, 
or, by acting immediately upon the air, to generate a 
movement opposite to its own direction. 

The Staffordshire Jack of Hilton, in 1680, was a small 
steam-boiler under the following guise: it was a little 
hollow image of brass, of about twelve inches high, 
kneeling upon the left knee, and holding the right hand 
upon the head, having a little hole in the place of the 
mouth about the bigness of a great pin's head, and 
another in the back about two thirds of an inch in diam- 
eter: at this last hole it was filled with water (about 
four pints and a quarter), which, when set to a strong- 
fire, evaporated after the same manner as an ^olopile, 
and vented itself at the smaller hole in the mouth. 

Father Verbiest, in his Astronomia JEiiropcea^ 1680, 
gives a curious account of some experiments that he 
made at Pekin. He placed an ^olopile upon a car, and 
directed the steam generated within it upon a wheel to 
which four wings were attached ; the motion thus pro- 
duced was communicated by gearing to the wheel of the 
car. The machine continued to move with great veloci- 
ty as long as the steam lasted, and by means of a kind 
of helm it could be turned in various dii^ctions. An ex- 
periment was made with the same instrument applied to 
a small ship, and with no less success.. 

These facts belong to the curiosities of the subject. 
In tracing the practical history of the Steam-engine 
through some of its earlier modifications, we shall find 
that, although the present form of this stupendous ma- 
chine almost deserves the title of an invention, yet many 
steps had been taken, and much labor and much ingenu- 
ity expended, before it was brought to that point from 
which the more modern improvements may be said to 
have begun. 



MACHINE OF BLASC6 DE GAEAY. 275 

The first apparatus of this description of which any 
authentic account has been preserved was suggested by- 
Hero the elder, who hved at Alexandria about B.C. 100. 
It consisted of a vessel in which steam was generated 
by the application of external heat. A ball was supplied 
with the elastic vapor thus procured by means of a bent 
pipe, a steam-tight joint being provided for that purpose. 
Two tubes, bent to a right angle, are the only parts open 
to the air, and as the steam rushes out from very minute 
apertures, a rotatory motion is produced. A description 
of this apparatus is preserved in Hero's Spiritalia^ pub- 
lished by the Jesuits in 1693 ; and an excellent account 
of Hero's inventions has been published by Mr. Bennet 
Woodcroft. 

The next attempt was the experiment made in 1543 
by Blasco de Garay, a sea-captain, to propel vessels by a 
machine having the appearance of a steam-engine. This 
experiment was made before the Emperor Charles V. in 
the port of Barcelona, in the Trinity^ 200 tons burden. 
All that could be discovered during the trial w^as that 
the machinery consisted of a large boiler containing wa- 
ter, and that wheels were attached to each side of the 
vessel, by the revolution of which it was propelled. Aft- 
er the experiment Garay took away all the machinery, 
leaving only the framing of wood in the arsenals of Bar- 
celona. As a boiler was used, it is probable, though not 
certain, that steam was the agent. It is most likely that 
the contrivance of Garay was identical with that of Hero. 
The experiment succeeded, Garay was rewarded, and the 
usefulness of the contrivance in towing ships out of port 
was admitted, yet it does not appear that a second ex- 
periment was ever made, much less that the machine was 
brought into practical use. Mr. Macgregor impugns this 
report,* and states, as the result of his inquiries in Spain, 
that if Blasco de Garay used a steam-engine to propel a 
vessel, the evidence of the fact is not afforded by his two 
letters at Simancas, and is not produced, if it is known 
there or at Barcelona, by the public officers and others 
interested in supporting such a claim. 

Seventeen years later, in 1615, Solomon de Cans, who 
had been engineer and architect to Louis XIII., King of 
* In a Paper read to the Society of Arts, April 14, 1858. 



276 STEAM-MACHINE OF BRANCAS. 

France, published a work, in which he speaks of the great 
violence " when water exhales in air by means of fire, and 
the said ak is inclosed ; as, for example, take a ball of 
copper of one or two feet diameter, and one inch thick, 
which being filled with water by a small hole, which 
shall be strongly stopped with a peg, so that neither air 
nor water can escape, it is certain that, if we put the said 
ball upon a great fire, so that it will become very hot, it 
will cause a compression so violent that the ball will burst 
in pieces with a noise hke a petard." - This efiect is due 
more to the high-pressure steam raised from the water 
than to the pressure of the heated air contained in the 
ball. It is, however, evident that De Cans ascribed the 
force entirely to the air, and not to the agency of steam, 
which he never mentions ; wherefore he can not be con- 
sidered to have had a share in the invention of the steam- 
engine. 

Next is Brancas's Revolving Apparatus, which was 
still more simple than that contrived by Hero. A cop- 
per vessel, filled with water (in the original figure made 
in the form of an ornamental head), was furnished with a 
pipe, through which the steam was propelled ; and strik- 
ing against the vanes of a float, readily gave motion to 
pestles and mortars for pounding materials to make gun- 
powder, and rolling-stones for grinding the same; ma- 
chines for raising water by buckets, for sawing timber, 
for driving piles, etc. No very considerable force could 
have been obtained from this simple apparatus, as the 
steam, passing through the atmosphere in its passage to 
the wheel, must, to a certain extent at least, be converted 
into water ; and the method has no analogy to any appli- 
cation of steam in modern engines. 

After the publication of the work by Brancas, more 
than thirty years elapsed ere the appearance of the Mar- 
quis of Worcester's Century of Inventions recalled the 
attention of the scientific world to this important sub- 
ject. His Hydraulic Machine is described at p. 161-168. 
It " raised water more than forty geometrical feet by the 
power of one man only, and in a very short space of time 
draT\dng up four vessels of Avater through a tube or chan- 
nel not more than a span in width." 

This contrivauce was a great advance upon that of De 



PAPm'S IMPROVEMENTS. 277 

Cans ; for, allowing that he knew the physical agent by 
which the water was driven upward in his apparatus, 
still it was only a method of causing a vessel of boihng 
water to empty itself; and, before a repetition of the 
process could be made, the vessel should be refilled, and 
again boiled. In the machine of Lord Worcester, on 
the other hand, the agency of the steam was employed 
in the same manner as it is in the steam-engine of the 
present day, being generated in one vessel, and used for 
mechanical purposes in another. Upon this distinction 
depends the whole practicability of using steam as a 
mechanical agent. Had its action been confined to the 
vessel in which it was produced, it never could have been 
usefully employed. 

Sir Samuel Morland's "Principles of the New Force 
of Fire" has been noticed at page 159, but he does not 
indicate the form of the machine by which he proposed 
to render the force of steam a useful mover. It is, how- 
ever, remarkable, that at this early period, before experi- 
ments had been made on the expansion which water un- 
dergoes in evaporation, Morland should have given so 
near an approximation to the actual amount of that ex- 
pansion. It can scarcely be supposed that such an esti- 
mate could be obtained by him otherwise than by exper- 
iments. 

To Denis Papin, a native of Blois, is due the discovery, 
in 1688, of one of the qualities of steam, to the proper 
management of which is owing much of the efiicacy of 
the modern steam-engine. He conceived the idea of 
producing a moving power by means of a piston working 
in a cylinder, as in the motion of pumps ; and he first 
proposed to produce the vacuum under the piston by 
means of common air-pumps worked by a w^ater-wheel. 
This, however, would but amount to a mere transfer of 
power ; but he subsequently produced the vacuum in 
another way. He constructed a small model cylinder, 
in which was placed a solid piston; and in the bottom 
of the cylinder, under the piston, was contained a small 
quantity of water, which being heated by fire, steam was 
produced, the elastic force of which raised the jDiston to 
the top of the cyHnder : the fire being then removed, and 
the cylinder being cooled by the surrounding air, the 



278 papin's improvements. 

steam was condensed and reconverted into water, leav- 
ing a vacuum in the cylinder, into which the piston was 
pressed by the force of the atmosphere. The fire being 
applied and subsequently removed, another ascent and 
descent was accomplished, and in the same manner the 
alternate motion of the piston was continued. 

JN'evertheless, Arago gives the invention of the steam- 
engine to Papin, who certainly imagined the formation 
of a vacuum by cooling the steam ; and also heated the 
steam, and when he wanted it to cool, tooh away the fire, 
Papin did not, however, make any machine at all, al- 
though Arago thus speaks of it : 

The machine, in which our countryman was the first to combine 
the elastic force of steam with the property possessed by this vapor of 
annihilating itself by cooling, he never made on a large scale : his 
experiments were always made with simple models. The water in- 
tended to generate the steam was not even contained in a separate 
vessel; inclosed in the cylinder, it rested on the metal plate that 
closed the orifice at the bottom. It was this plate that Papin heated 
directly, to transform the water into steam; it was from the same 
plate that he took away the fire when he wished for condensation to 
be effected. Such a proceeding, barely allowable in an experiment 
intended to verify the correctness of a principle, would evidently be 
still less admissible if the piston were required to move with some 
celerity. Papin, while saying that success might be attained "by 
various constructions easy to imagine," does not indicate any of them. 
He leaves to his successors both the merit of applying his fruitful idea, 
and that of inventing the details which alone could insure the success 
of the machine. 

None of the several inventions hitherto noticed appear 
to have advanced beyond experimental models. About 
the close of the seventeenth century, Captain Thomas 
Savery proposed to combine the machine described by 
the Marquis of Worcester with an apparatus for raising 
water by suction into a vacuum produced by the con- 
densation of steam. Savery appears to have been un- 
aware of Papin's invention, and states that his discovery 
of the condensing principle arose as follows. Having 
drunk a flask of Florence wine at a tavern, and flung the 
empty flask on the fire, he called for a basin of water to 
wash his hands. A small quantity which remained in 
the flask began to boil, and steam issued from its mouth. 
He then put on a thick glove, seized the flask, and 
plunged its mouth in the cold water, which immediately 
rushed up into the flask and filled it. 



savery's engine. ^ 2Y9 

According to another version of the story, it was the 
accidental circumstance of Savery's immersing a heated 
tobacco-pipe in water, and perceiving the water imme- 
diately rush up the tube on the concentration by the cold 
of the warm and thin air, that first suggested to the cap- 
tain the important use that might be made of steam, or 
any other gas expanded by heat, as a means of creating 
a vacuum. 

This circumstance immediately suggested to Savery 
the possibility of giving effect to the atmospheric press- 
ure by creating a vacuum, first by exhausting the barrel 
of a pump by filling it with steam, and then condensing 
the same steam, when the atmospheric pressure would 
force the water from the well into the pump-barrel, pro- 
vided it were not more than thirty-four feet above the 
water in the well. He perceived also that, having lifted 
the water to this height, he might use the elastic force 
of steam, in the manner described by the Marquis of 
Worcester, to raise the same water to a still greater ele- 
vation; and that the same steam which accomplished 
this mechanical effort would serve, by its subsequent 
condensation, to reproduce the vacuum and draw up 
more water. " It was on this principle," says Lardner, 
" that Savery constructed the first engine in which steam 
was ever brought into practical operation." He " enter- 
tained" the Royal Society with showing them his engine, 
for the success of which they gave him a certificate. 
The engine is thus referred to in Koitzer's System of 
Hydrostatics in 1729: ''The first time a steam-engine 
played was in a potter's house at Lambeth, where, though 
it was a small engine, yet it (the water) forced its way 
through the roof and struck up the tiles in a manner 
that surprised all the spectators." 

Captain Thomas Savery was descended from an old family in South 
Devon, where he was born about the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. Mechanics appear to have been his favorite study, and as he 
pursued them practically, he was able to form a body of workmen to 
execute his various plans. He had a patent for his steam-engine in 
1698, and the exclusive privilege of constructing it was confirmed to 
him in 1 699 by Act of Parliament. Desaguliers has unjustly accused 
him of having derived his plans from the Marquis of Worcester ; but 
all writers have acknowledged that he was the first who ever con- 
structed an engine of this kind which possessed any great and prac- 



280 papin's digester. 

tical utility ; and it must be stated, that the experiments, in 1690, of 
Papin (to whom it has been attempted to transfer the honor of the 
invention) were not productive of any useful results till followed out 
in England in the beginning of the following century. It is of no 
consequence whether Savery was or was not acquainted with these 
experiments, for he worked on essentially different principles. His 
moving power was the elasticity of steam, to which our engineers 
have again returned since Watt demonstrated the great advantage of 
it ; whereas Papin used the pressure of the atmosphere (which can 
never exceed a few pounds on the square inch of the piston), and 
steam was only a subordinate agent by which he procured a vacuum. 
The arrangement also of the different parts of Savery's engine, and 
particularly the means he used for condensing the steam, are all his 
own, and mark him for a man of truly inventive genius. It is said 
that Savery Joined in a patent with Newcomen and Cawley for the 
atmospheric engine ; but this appears to be a mistake, since no traces 
of such an instrument have been found at the Rolls Office. He took 
out a patent, however, in 1686, for polishing plate glass and for row- 
ing vessels with paddle-wheels, and, in 1706, for a double bellows to 
produce a continuous blast. He published in 1698 Navigation Im- 
proved; in 1702, The Miner's Friend; and in 1705, a translation, in 
folio, of Cohorn's Fortification. This last was dedicated to George, 
Prince of Denmark, to whom he was indebted, that same year, for 
the office of treasurer to the sick and wounded. Savery is understood 
to have accumulated a considerable fortune. He died in 1715. — 
Prof. Rigaud, F. R. S. 

About 1717, the Safety-valve, which had been invented 
about 1681 by Papin for his Digester, was applied to 
Savery's engines by Desaguliers. 

Papin, while making experiments for Boyle, discovered that if va- 
por be prevented from rising, the water becomes hotter than the usual 
boiling-point. This led to the invention of his *'Bone Digester," 
which he presented to the Royal Society, with a letter describing its 
uses for softening bones, and for '* cookery, voyages at sea, confection- 
ery, making of drinks, chemistry, and dyeing." Charles II. com- 
manded Papin to make a Digester for his laboratory at Whitehall, 
and the invention excited great interest. It was exhibited in opera- 
tion once a week, in Water Lane, Blackfriars, in a house '' over against 
the Blue Boot, " where the people crowded in such numbers that only 
those were admitted who brought with them recommendations from 
Fellows of the Royal Society. In 1684, when Papin was appointed 
temporaiy curator by the Royal Society, he invited certain Fellows to 
a supper prepared by his Digesters. John Evelyn was a guest ; and 
he tells us how the hardest beef and mutton bones were made by the 
Digester as soft as cheese, without water or other liquor, and with less 
than eight ounces of coal, producing " an incredible quantity of 
gravy," and delicious jelly from the beef-bones. The guests also ate 
pike and other fish bones " without impediment," and pigeons " stew- 
ed in their own juice ;" in such case the natural juice reducing ** the 
hardest bones to tenderaess." Evelyn sent a glass of the jelly to his 



newcomen's engine. 281 

wife,' "to the reproach of all that the ladies ever made of the best 
hartshorn." 

The enormous strength required for Papin's Digester, and the means 
to which he was obliged to resort for confining the covers, must have 
early shown him what a powerful agent he was using. Subsequently 
he adapted the piston of the common sucking-pump to a steam-ma- 
chine, making it work in the cylinder, and applying steam as the agent 
to raise it. It is a curious fact, that although Papin invented the 
safety-valve, he did not apply it to his steam-machine. 

About the year 1711, Thomas Newcomen, an iron- 
monger, and John Cawley, a glazier, both of Dartmouth, 
Devon, in visiting the tin mines of Cornwall, saw Savery's 
engine at work, and detected the causes which led to its 
inefficiency for drainage. This N'ewcomen proposed to 
remedy by his atmospheric engine, in which he intended 
to work the mining pumps by connecting the end of the 
pump-rod by a chain with the arch-head of a working 
beam playing on an axis, the other arch-head of the beam 
being connected by a chain with the rod of a solid pis- 
ton moving air-tight in a cylinder. If a vacuum be cre- 
ated beneath the piston, the atmosphere will press it 
down with a force of fifteen feet per square inch, and the 
end of the beam being thus raised, the pump-rod will be 
drawn up. If an equivalent pressure be introduced be- 
loAV the piston, it will neither rise nor fall ; and if, in this 
case, the pump-rod be made heavier than the piston and 
its rod, so as to overcome the friction, it will descend and 
elevate the piston again to the top of the cylinder, and 
so the process may be continued. 

The power of such a machine would depend entirely 
on the magnitude of the piston, the vacuum and the 
counterpoise being efiected by the alternate introduction 
and condensation of the steam. We have only space for 
this general description of Newcomen's engine. It was 
worked by the alternate opening and closing of two 
valves, the regulating and condensing. When the piston 
reached the top of the cylinder, the former was to be 
closed and the latter opened; and on reaching the bot- 
tom, the former was to be opened and the latter closed. 

It has been said that we are indebted for the import- 
ant invention in this engine termed ''Hand-gear," by 
which its valves or cocks are Avorked by the machine it- 
self, to an idle boy named Humphrey Potter, who, being 



282 BIRTH OF JAMES WATT. 

employed to stop and open a valve, saw that he c<5uld 
save himself the trouble of attending and watching it by 
fixing a plug upon a part of the machine which came to 
the place at the proper times, in consequence of the gen- 
eral movement. If this anecdote be true, what does it 
prove ? That Humphrey Potter might be very idle, but 
that he was, at the same time, very ingenious. It was a 
contrivance, not the result of accident, but of acute ob- 
servation and successful experiment. 

Although we find in Newcomen's engine no new prin- 
ciple, its mechanism and combinations were very import- 
ant. The method of condensing the steam by the sud- 
den injection of water, and of expelling the air and water 
from the cylinder by the injection of steam, are two proc- 
esses which are still necessary to the operation of the im- 
proved Steam-engine, and appear to be wholly due to the 
inventors of the Atmospheric Engine. After Mr. Beigh- 
ton had, about 1718, made this machine itself shut and 
open the cocks for regulating the supplies of steam and 
water, for half a century no farther important progress 
was made, until Mr. Watt applied his vast genius to the 
adaptation of steam-power to the uses of life. The ear- 
lier steam-engines may be regarded as steam-pumps, and 
that of Newcomen the connecting link between the steam- 
pump and the modern engine, of which it contained the 
germ. 

We have now to hail the appearance of the great im- 
prover of the Steam-engine. 

James Watt was born at Greenock on the 19th of 
January, 1736. He was the fourth child in a family 
which for a hundred years had more or less professed 
mathematics and navigation. His constitution was del- 
icate, and his mental powers were precocious. He was 
distinguished from an early age by his candor and truth- 
fulness ; and his father, to ascertain the cause of any of 
his boyish quarrels, used to say, " Let James speak ; from 
him I always hear truth." James also showed his con- 
structive tastes equally early, experimenting on his play- 
things with a set of small carpenter's tools which his fa- 
ther had given him. At six he was still at home. '' Mr. 
Watt," said a friend to the father, " you ought to send 
that boy to school, and not let him trifle away his time 



tllS EARLY BENT TOWARD PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 283 

at home." '' Look what he is doing before you condemn 
him," was the reply. The visitor then observed the child 
had drawn mathematical lines and figures on the hearth, 
and was engaged in a process of calculation. On put- 
ting questions to him, he was astonished at his quickness 
and simplicity. " Forgive me," said he, " this child's edu- 
cation has not been neglected ; this is no common child." 

Watt's cousin, Mrs. Marian Campbell, describes his in- 
ventive capacity as a story-teller, and details an incident 
of his occupying himself with the steam of a tea-kettle, 
and by means of a cup and a spoon making an early ex- 
periment in the condensation of steam. To this incident 
she probably attached more importance than was its due 
from reverting to it when illustrated by her after-recol- 
lections. Out of this story, reliable or not in the sense 
ascribed to it, M. Arago obtained an oratorical point for 
an eloge which he delivered to the French Institute. 
Watt may or may not have been occupied as a boy with 
the study of the condensation of steam while he was play- 
ing with the kettle. The story suggests a possibility, 
nothing more ; though it has been made the foundation 
of a grave announcement, the subject of a pretty picture, 
and will ever remain a basis for suggestive speculation. 

Watt was sent to a commercial school, where he was 
provided with a fair outfit of Latin and with some ele- 
ments of Greek ; but mathematics he studied with great- 
er zest, and with proportionate success. By the time he 
was fifteen he had read twice, with great attention, S. 
Gravesande's Elements of Natural Philosophy / and 
" while under his father's roof he went on with various 
chemical experiments, repeating them again and again, 
until satisfied of their accuracy from his own observa- 
tions." He even made himself a small electrical machine 
about 1750-53 ; no mean performance at that date, since, 
according to Priestley's History of Electricity^ the Ley- 
den phial itself was not invented until the years 1745-6. 

His pastime lay chiefly in his father's marine store, 
among the sails and ropes, the blocks and tackle, or by 
the ^Id gray gateway of the Mansion House on the hill 
above Greenock, where he would loiter away hours by 
day, and at night lie down on his back and watch the 
stars through the trees. 



284 WATT ARRIVES IN LONDON. 

At this early age Watt suffered from jcontinual and 
violent headaches, which often affected his nervous sys- 
tem for many days, even weeks ; and he was similarly 
afflicted throughout his long life. He seldom rose early, 
but accomplished more in a few hours' study than ordi- 
nary minds do in many days. He was never in a hurry, 
and always had leisure to give to his friends, to poetry, 
romance, and the publications of the day : he read indis- 
criminately almost every new book he could procure. 
He assisted his father in his business, and soon learned 
to construct with his own hands several of the articles 
required in the way of his parent's trade ; and by means 
of a small forge, set up for his own use, he repaired and 
made various kinds of instruments, and converted, by the 
way, a large silver coin into a punch-ladle, as a trophy of 
his early skill as a metal-smith. From this aptitude for 
ingenious handiwork, and in accordance with his own de- 
liberate choice, it was decided that he should jDroceed to 
qualify himself for following the trade of a mathematical- 
instrument-maker. He accordingly went to Glasgow in 
June, 1754, his list of personal property including "silk 
stockings, ruffled shirts, cut-velvet waistcoats, one work- 
ing ditto^ one leather apron, a quadrant, a score of arti- 
cles of carpentry, and a pair bibels." From Glasgow, 
after a year's stay, he proceeded for better instruction to 
London, on the 5th of June, 1755, in charge of his con- 
nection, John Marr. They traveled on horseback, riding 
the same horses throughout, and taking twelve days for 
the journey. 

On Watt's arrival in the metropolis he sought a situa- 
tion, but in vain ; and he was beginning to despond, when 
he obtained work with one John Morgan, an instrument- 
maker in Finch Lane, Cornhill. Here he gradually be- 
came proficient in making quadrants, parallel rulers, com- 
passes, theodolites, etc., until, at the end of a year's prac- 
tice, he could make " a brass sector with a French joint, 
which is reckoned as nice a piece of framing work as is 
in the trade." During this interval he contrived to live 
upon 85. a week, exclusive of his lodging. His fear o£ 
the press-gang and his bodily ailments, however, led to 
his quitting London in August, 1756, and returning to 
Scotland, after investing twenty guineas in additional 
tools. 



watt's great discovery. 285 

At Glasgow, through the intervention of Dr. Dick, he 
was first employed in cleaning and repairing some of the 
instruments belonging to the college, and, after some dif- 
ficulty, he received permission to open a shop within the 
precincts as " mathematical-instrument-maker to the Uni- 
versity." Here Watt prospered, pursuing alike his course 
of manual labor and of mental study, and especially ex- 
tending his acquaintance with physics ; endeavoring, as 
he said, " to find out the weak side of Nature, and to 
vanquish her." About this time he contrived an ingen- 
ious machine for drawing in perspective ; and from fifty 
to eighty of these instruments, manufactured by him, 
were sent to difierent parts of the world. He had now 
procured the friendship of Dr. Black and another Univer- 
sity worthy, John Robison, who, in stating the circum- 
stances of his first introduction to Watt, says, " I saw a 
workman, and expected no more, but was surprised to 
find a philosopher as young as myself, and always ready 
to instruct me." 

It was some time in 1764 that the Professor of Natural 
Philosophy in the University desired Watt to repair a 
pretty model of Newcomen's steam-engine. Like every 
thing which came into Watt's hands, it soon became an 
object of most serious study. Now the great defect of 
this engine was that more than three fourths of the whole 
steam was condensed and wasted during the ascent of 
the piston, and to this defect Watt applied himself, and 
so approached his great achievement, of which Robison 
records these incidents : 

At the breaking up of the College (I think in 1 765) I went to the 
country. About a fortnight after this I came to town, and went to 
have a chat with Mr. Watt, and to communicate to him some observ- 
ations I had made on Desaguliers' and Belidor's account of the 
steam-engine. I came into Mr. Watt's parlor without ceremony, and 
found him sitting before the fire, having lying on his knees a little tin 
cistern which he was looking at. I entered into conversation on what 
we had been speaking of at our last meeting — something about steam. 
All the while Mr. Watt kept looking at the fire, and laid down the 
cistern at the foot of his chair. At last he looked up at me, and said 
briskly, ' ' You need not fash yourself any more about that, man ; I 
have now made an engine that shall not waste a particle of steam. 
It shall all be boiling hot — ay, and hot water injected, if I please." 
So saying Mr. Watt looked with complacency at the little thing at 
his feet, and, seeing that I observed him, he shoved it away under a 



286 watt's great disco yeey. 

table with his foot. I put a question to him about the nature of his 
contrivance. He answered me rather dryly. I did not press him to 
a farther explanation at that time, knowing that I had offended him 
a few days before by blabbing a petty contrivance which he had hit 
on for turning the cocks of the engine. I had mentioned this in 
presence of an engine-builder, who was going to erect one for a 
friend of mine, and this having come to Mr. Watt's ears, he found 
fault with it. 

At a later period Watt frankly told Robison all his 
contrivance; and long after, the latter found that the 
little apparatus which he saw on Watt's knee, and which 
he pushed under the table with his foot, was the con- 
denser of his first experiment. In the summer of 1767 
the whole contrivance was perfect in Watt's mind ; and 
so well defined there was the date of his invention, that, 
on being asked in 1817 whether he recollected how the 
first idea of his great discovery occurred to him, he re- 
plied, " Oh yes, perfectly. One Sunday afternoon, I had 
gone to take a walk in the Green of Glasgow, and when 
about half icay between the Herd's house anclArn^s Well^ 
my thoughts having been naturally turned to the experi- 
ments I had been engaged in for saving heat in the 
cylinder, at that part of the road the idea occurred to me 
that, as steam was an elastic vapor, it would expand, and 
rush into a previously exhausted space; and that if I 
were to produce a vacuum in a separate vessel, and open 
a communication between the steam in the cylinder and 
the exhausted vessel, such would be the consequence." 

As the result of his examination of the Newcomen engine, Watt 
soon found, notwithstanding all his efforts, that it would not give the 
amount of work represented by the fuel consumed ; and, on examin- 
ing the structure of the machine more closely, he was led to ask why 
the steam should first do its work in the cylinder, and then be con- 
densed there by a jet of cold water. Steam, like air, is an elastic 
fluid, and will rush into a vacuum communicating with a vessel in 
which it is contained. Let the cylinder of the engine be filled with 
steam ; establish a communication between it and another vessel, kept 
as free as possible of air, and in which a jet of cold water is playing ; 
the steam will then be condensed, and the temperature of the cylinder 
will not be affected. This is the great discovery of Watt ; he made 
others more ingenious, but none of greater utility : the best proof of 
its excellence is, that it still keeps its place in the condensing engine 

after nearly a century of progress in the art The pigmy 

cistern (in which Watt made his first experiment) has been the parent 
of a progeny of giants, and has astonished the world by the magni- 
tude of the results produced from a cause apparently so insignificant. — 
James Sime, M.A. 



WATT AND BOULTON. 287 

The interesting little model, as altered by the hand of 
Watt, was long placed beside the noble statue of the en- 
gineer in the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow. Watt 
himself, when he had got the bearings of the invention, 
could think of nothing else but his machine, and address- 
ed himself to Dr. Roebuck, of the Carron Iron-works, 
with the view of its practical introduction to the world. 
A partnership ensued, but the connection did not prove 
satisfactory. Watt went on with his experiments, and 
in September, 1766, wrote to a friend, "I think I have 
laid up a stock of experience that will soon pay me for 
the trouble it has cost me." Yet it was between eight 
and nine years before that invaluable experience was 
made available, so as either to benefit the public or repay 
the inventor, and a much longer term elapsed before it 
was possible for that repayment to be reckoned in the 
form of substantial profit. 

Watt now began to practice as a land-surveyor and 
civil engineer. His first engineering work was a survey 
for a canal to unite the Forth and Clyde, in furtherance 
of which he had to appear before the House of Commons. 
His consequent journey to London was still more im- 
portant, for then it was that he saw for the first time the 
great manufactory which Boulton had established at 
Soho, and of which he was afterward himself to be the 
guiding intelligence. In the mean time, among his other 
performances, he invented a Micrometer for measuring 
distances ; and, what is still more remarkable, he enter- 
tained the idea of moving canal-boats by the steam- 
engine through the instrumentality of a Spiral Oar^ 
which as nearly as possible coincides with the screw-pro- 
peller of our day. 

Watt's negotiations for partnership with Boulton were 
long and tedious. Dr. Roebuck's creditors concurred 
because, curiously enough, none of them valued Watfs 
engine a farthing. Watt himself now began to despair, 
and his health failed ; yet in 1774, when he had removed 
to Birmingham, he wrote to his father : " The Fire-en- 
gine I have invented is now going, and answers much 
better than any other that has yet been made, and I ex- 
pect that the invention will be very beneficial to me." 

A long series of experimental trials was nevertheless 



288 watt's CORNISH E]S^GINES. 

requisite before the engine could be brought to such per- 
fection as to render it generally available to the public, 
and therefore profitable to its manufacturers. In Janu- 
ary, 1775, six years of the patent had elapsed, and there 
seemed some probability of the remaining eight running 
out as fruitlessly. An application which was made for 
the extension of its term was unexpectedly opposed by 
the eloquence of Burke; but the orator and his asso- 
ciates failed, and the extension was accorded by Act of 
Parliament. 

The first practical employment of Watt's engines to 
any considerable extent was in the mining districts of 
Cornwall, where he himself was, in consequence, com- 
pelled to spend much of his time subsequent to 1775. 
Here he had to contend not only with natural objects in 
the dark abysses of deeply-flooded mines, but with a 
rude and obstmate class of men as deeply flooded with 
inveterate prejudices. The result in the way of profit 
was not, however, satisfactory, notwithstanding the serv- 
ice to the mining interest was enormous. '' It appears," 
says Watt in 1780, " by our books, that Cornwall has 
hitherto eat up all the profits we have drawn from it, 
and all we have got by other places, and a good sum of 
our own money to the bargain." Even in 1783 he writes, 
"We have altered all the engines in Cornwall but one, 
and many in other parts of England, but do not acquire 
riches so fast as might be imagined; the expenses of 
carrying on our business are necessarily very great, and 
have hitherto consumed almost all our profits ; but we 
hope to do better by continuing our attention and exer- 
tions, and by multiplying the number of our works." 

At this stage Watt himself was more fertile in me- 
chanical inventions than in any other portion of his busy 
life. Taking his patents in their chronological order, the 
first (subsequent to that of 1769) was " for a new method 
of copying letters and other writings expeditiously" by 
means of copying pi^esses. Of the same date was his in- 
vention of a machine "for drying linen and muslin by 
steam." On the 25th of October, 1781, he took out his 
third patent (the second of the steam-engine series) "for 
certain new methods of applying the vibrating or recip- 
rocating motion of steam or fire engines, to produce a 



watt's coknish engines. 289 

continued rotative motion round an axis or centre, and 
thereby to give motion to the wheels of mills or other 
machines. One of these methods was that commonly- 
known as the sun and planet wheels ; they were five in 
all. A favorite employment of his in the workshops at 
Soho, in the lattfer month of 1783 and the earlier ones of 
1784, was to teach his steam-engine, now become nearly 
as docile as it was powerful, to work a tilt-hammer for 
forging iron and making steel. '' Three hundred blows 
per minute — a thing never done before," filled him, as 
his biographer* says, with feelings of excusable pride. 
Another patent in the steam-engine series, taken out in 
1784, contained, beside other methods of converting a 
circular or angular motion into a perpendicular or recti- 
lineal motion, the well-known and much-admired parallel 
motion^ and the apphcation of the steam-engine to give 
motion to wheel-carriages for carrying persons and 
goods. To ascertain the exact number of strokes made 
by an engine during a given time, and thereby to check 
the cheats of the Cornish miners. Watt also invented the 
" Counter," with its several inijexes. Among his leading 
improvements, introduced at various periods, were the 
throttle-valve^ the application of the governor^ the barom- 
eter or float, the steam-gauge^ and the indicator. The 
term during which he seems to have thus combined the 
greatest maturity with the greatest activity of intellect, 
and the portion of his life which they comprehended, 
was from his fortieth to his fiftieth year. Yet it was a 
term of increased suffering from his acute sick headaches, 
and remarkable for the infirmities over which he tri- 
umphed ; notwithstanding, he himself complained of his 
" stupidity and want of the inventive faculty." 

Watt's chemical studies in 1783, and the calculations 
they involved from experiments made by foreign chem- 
ists, induced him to make a proposal for a philosophical 
uniformity of weights and measures ; and he discussed 
this proposal with Priestley and Magellan. While Watt 
was examining the constituent parts of water, he had op- 

* Mr. James Patrick Muirhead, in his Life of James Watt, with 
Selections from his Correspondence; from which work, and an able re- 
view of the same in the Times journal, the leading data and charac- 
teristics in the present sketch have been in part derived. 

N 



290 POKTKAIT OF WATT. 

portunities of familiar intercourse not only with Priest- 
ley, but with Withering, Keir, Edgeworth, Galton, Dar- 
win, and his own partner Boulton — all men above the 
average for their common interest in scientific inquiries. 
Dr. Parr frequently attended their meetings, and they 
kept up a correspondence with Sir William Herschel, 
Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Solander, and Afzelius. Mrs. 
Schimmelpenninck, who was greatly given to physiog- 
nomical studies, has left us this picture of Watt at this 
period : 

Mr. Boulton was a man to rule society with dignity ; Mr. Watt to 
lead the contemplative life of a deeply introverted and patiently ob- 
servant philosopher. He was one of the most complete specimens of 
the melancholic temperament. His head was generally bent forward, 
or leaning on his hand in meditation ; his shoulders stooping, and his 
chest falling in ; his limbs lank and unmuscular, and his complexion 
sallow. His intellectual development was magnificent; comparison 
and causality immense, with large ideality and constructiveness, indi- 
viduality, and enormous concentrativeness and caution. 

He had a broad Scottish accent ; gentle, modest, and unassuming 
manners ; yet, when he " entered a room, men of letters, men of sci- 
ence, nay, military men, artists, ladies, even little children, thronged 
round him. Ladies would appeal to him on the best means of devis- 
ing gi'ates, curing smoky chimneys, warming their houses, and obtain- 
ing fast colors. I can speak from experience of his teaching me how 
to make a dulcimer and improve a Jew's haip." 

In the year 1786 Watt and Boulton visited Paris, on 
the invitation of the French government, to superintend 
the erection of certain steam-engines, and especially to 
suggest improvements in the great hydraulic machine 
. of Marly, which Watt himself designates a " venerable" 
work. In Paris Watt made many acquaintances, includ- 
ing Lavoisier, La Place, Fourcroy, and others scarcely 
less eminent; and while here he discovered with Ber- 
thollet a new method of hleachmg by chlorates, an in- 
vention of the latter which Watt subsequently introduced 
into England. 

Meanwhile Watt had vigilantly to defend his patents 
at home, Avhich were assailed by unworthy and surrejD- 
titious rivals as soon as it was proved that they were 
pecuniarily valuable. Some of the competing engines, 
as Watt himself described them, were simply asthmatic. 
" Hornblower's, at Radstock, was obliged to stand still 
once every ten minutes to snore and snort." "Some 



WATT AND STEAM NAVIGATION. 291 

were like Evans's Mill, which was a gentlemanly mill ; 
it would go when it had nothing to do, but it refused to 
work." The legal proceedings both in equity and at com- 
mon law which now became necessary were numerous. 
One bill of costs, from 1796 to 1800, amounted to between 
£5000 and £6000 ; and the mental and bodily labor, the 
anxiety and vexation which were superadded, involved a 
fearful tax on the province of Watt's discoveries. 

With the year 1800 came the expiration of the privi- 
lege of the patent of 1769, as extended by the statute of 
1775, and also the dissolution of the original copartner- 
ship of Messrs. Boulton and Watt, then offive-and-twenty 
years' duration. The contract was renewed by their sons, 
the business having become so profitable that Watt and 
his children were provided with a source of independent 
income ; and at the age of sixty-four the great inventor 
had personally realized some of the benefits he contem- 
plated. 

Soho, to some extent, maintained its reputation as a 
steam foundry after Watt himself had ceased to manage 
it. By 1824, when a monument in Westminster Abbey 
was voted to him, it had created power in round num- 
bers equal to that of 100,000 horses. By 1854 an addi- 
tion of nearly two thirds of that amount had been made, 
giving a total amount equal to that of 170,000 horses; 
and this was the amount of power supplied from the 
forges of one manufactory only. 

Henceforth Watt's ingenuity became discursive, dis- 
cretionary, almost capricious, but in every phase and 
form it continued to be beneficent. In 1808 he founded 
a prize in Glasgow College, as an acknowledgment of 
"the many favors" which that learned body had con- 
ferred upon him. In 1816 he made a donation to the 
town of Greenock, " to form the beginning of a scientific 
library" for the instruction of its young men. Nor, amid 
such donations, were others wanting on his part, such as 
true religion prescribes — to console the poor and relieve 
the sufifering. 

While resting in his latter days from severer labors, 
Watt's mind still dwelt on their great development in 
the form of Steam Navigation, It was long since he 
had posed his significant question as to whether " a spiral 
oar" or " two wheels" were to be preferred for this pur- 



292 WATT AND THE STEAM-CAKKIAGE. 

pose. But he lived to know that a steam-boat had been 
successfully used in America, that the British Channel 
had been crossed, and the Rhine navigated by another ; 
both vessels, the American and the British, having been 
impelled by engines manufactured at Soho, constructed 
on the principles invented by himself, and not without 
the benefit of his own direct inspection and counsels. 

In 1816, on a visit to Greenock, Watt made a voyage 
in a steam-boat to Rothsay and back again. In the 
course of this experimental trip he pointed out to the 
engineer of the boat the method of " backing" the en- 
gine. With a foot-rule he demonstrated to him what 
was meant. Not succeeding, however, he at last, under 
the impulse of the ruling passion (and we must remember 
he was then eighty), threw oflf his over-coat, and, putting 
his hand to the engine himself, showed the practical ap- 
plication of his lecture. Previously to this, the " back- 
stroke" of the steam-boat engine was either unknown or 
not generally known. The practice was to stop the en- 
gine entirely a considerable time before the vessel reach- 
ed the point of mooring, in order to allow for the gradual 
and natural diminution of her speed. 

With regard to the application of steam power to loco- 
tnotion on land^ it is remarkable enough that, when 
Watt's attention was first directed, by his friend Robi- 
son, to the steam-engine, ''he (Robison) at that time 
threw out an idea of applying the power to the moving 
of wheel-carriages." "But the scheme," adds Watt, 
" was not matured, and was soon abandoned on his go- 
ing abroad." 

In 1769, however, when he heard tliat a linen-draper, 
one Moore, had taken out a patent for moving wheel- 
carriages by steam, he replied, " If linen-draper Moore 
does not use my engine to drive his chaises, he can't 
drive them by steam." In the specification of his patent 
of 1784 he even described the principles and construction 
of " steam-engines which are applied to give motion to 
wheel-carriages for removing persons or goods, or other 
matters, from place to place ;' and in 1786, Watt himself 
had a steam-carriage " of some size under hand ;" but his 
most developed plan was to move such carriages " on a 
hard, smooth plain;" and there is no evidence to show 
that he even anticipated the union of the rail and wheel. 



WATT IN OLD AGE. 293 

Among Watt's mechanical recreations, soon after the 
date of the last of his steam-engine patents, were fom- 
plans of making lamps, which he describes in a letter to 
Argand ; and for a long time lamps were made at Soho 
upon his principles, which gave a light surpassing, both 
in steadiness and brilliancy, any thing of the kind that 
had appeared. About a year after, in 1788, he made " a 
pretty instrument for determining the specific gravities 
of liquids," having, he says to Dr. Black, improved on a 
hint he had taken. 

Watt also turned his " idle thoughts" toward the con- 
struction of an Arithmetical Machine ; but he does not 
appear ever to have prosecuted this design farther than 
by mentally considering the manner in which he could 
make it perform the processes of multiplication and di- 
vision. 

Early in the present century Watt devised, for the 
Glasgow Water-works, to bring pure spring-water across 
the Clyde, an articulated suction-pipe, with joints formed 
on the principle of those in a lobster's tail, and so made 
capable of accommodating itself to all the actual and pos- 
sible bendings at the bottom of the river. This pipe was, 
moreover, executed at Soho from his plans, and was found 
to succeed perfectly. 

Watt describes, as his hobby-horse, a machine to copy 
sculpture^ suggested to him by an implement he had seen 
and admired in Paris in 1802, where it was used for trac- 
ing and multiplying the dies of medals. He foresaw the 
possibility of enlarging its powers so as to make it capa- 
ble of working even on wood and marble, to do for solid 
masses and in hard materials what his copying-machine 
of 1782 had already done for drawings and writings im- 
pressed upon flat surfaces of paper — to produce, in fact, 
a perfect fac-simile of the original model. He worked at 
this machine most assiduously ; and his " likeness lathe," 
as he termed it, was set up in a garret, which, with all its 
mysterious contents, its tools and models included, have 
been carefully preserved as he left them. 

It is gratifying to find that the charms of Watt's pres- 
ence were not dimmed by age. " His friends," says Lord 
Jefli'ey, speaking of a visit which he paid to Scotland 
when upward of eighty, '' in that part of the country 
never saw him more full of intellectual victor and collo- 



294 WATT IN OLD AGE. 

quial animation, never more delightful or more instruct- 
ive." It was then also that Sir Walter Scott, meeting 
him " surrounded by a little band of northern literati," 
saw and heard what he felt he was never to see or hear 
again — " the alert, kind, benevolent old man, his talents 
and fancy overflowing on every subject, with his atten- 
tion alive to every one's question, his information at ev- 
ery one's command." Campbell the poet, who saw him 
later, in the beginning of 1819 (he was then eighty-three), 
describes him as so full of anecdote that he spent one of 
the most amusing days he had ever had with him. Lord 
Brougham, later still, in the summer of the same year, 
found his instructive conversation and his lively and even 
playful manner unchanged. But in the autumn of this 
year, on the 19th of August, he expired tranquilly at his 
house at Heathfield. He was buried at Hands worth. A 
tribute to his memory was but tardily rendered by the 
nation. Five years subsequent to Watt's death, in 1824, 
a meeting was held, at which the erection of a statue was 
j)roposed by Baron Dupin : there were present the prime 
minister, the Earl of Liverpool, and his colleagues, Mr. 
(afterward Sir Robert) Peel, and Mr. Huskisson ; the 
other principal speakers were Sir Humphrey Davy, Mr. 
Wilberforce, Sir James Mackintosh, and Mr. (now Lord) 
Brougham : yet of these illustrious men, two only. Peel 
and Brougham, lived to see completed the memorial 
which their eloquence so honorably advocated, for the 
statue was not erected until eleven years after it had 
been proposed — that is, in 1835. 

Li Westminster Abbey — in the chapel of St. Paul, on 
the north side of the choir of the chapel of Edward the 
Confessor — is placed a marble sitting statue of James 
Watt, by Chantrey, which was voted at the above meet- 
ing. It is a fine work, badly located, as classic sculpture 
in a Gothic edifice ever must be. The pedestal bears an 
eloquent inscription from the pen of Lord Brougham, and 
is remarkable for not containing a word of monumental 
flattery.* It is as follows : 

Not to perpetuate a name 

Which must endure while the peaceful arts flourish, 

But to. show 

* For this portrait-statue Chantrey received 6000 guineas. 



STATUE OP WATT IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 295 

That mankind have learned to honor those 

Who best deserve their gratitude, 

The king, 

His ministers, and many of the nobles 

And commoners of the realm, 

Raised this monument to 

James Watt, 

Who, directing the force of an original genius 

Early exercised in philosophic research 

To the improvement of 

The steam-engine. 

Enlarged the resources of his country, 

Increased the power of man. 

And rose to an eminent place 

Among the most illustrious followers of science 

And the real benefactors of the world. 

Born at Greenock, mdccxxxvi. Died at Heathfield, in Staiford- 

fihire, mdcccxix. 

Jeffrey and Arago added more elaborate tributes to 
Watt's genius ; and Wordsworth has declared that he 
looked upon him, considering its magnitude and univer- 
sality, " as perhaps the most extraordinary man that this 
country has ever produced." His noblest monument is, 
however, his own work. 

Wherever the Steam-engine is applied to manufactures or arts, to 
travel and transport by sea or land, to agriculture, even to war, there 
is Watt's instrumentality. The steam power of Great Britain alone 
is a stupendous item to contemplate in this sense. It is estimated in 
a recent number of the Quarterly Review as equivalent to the manual 
labor of 400, 000,000 of men, or 7nore than double the number of males 
supposed to inhabit the globe. Such power did Watt confer upon his 
nation, and in a still larger degree upon his species. 

A century ago (says Dr. Arnott), no man had conceived it possible 
that human ingenuity would one day devise a machine like the modern 
Steam-engine, which, at small comparative cost and with perfect obe- 
dience to man's will, should be able to perform the work of millions 
of human beings, and of countless horses and oxen, and of water-mills 
and wind-mills ; and which, in doing such complex and delicate labor 
as formerly was supposed to be obtainable only from human hands 
and skill, as of spinning, weaving, embroidering flower-patterns on 
cloth, etc. , should work with speed and exactness far surpassing the 
execution of ordinary human hands. 

Watt's patent for his first improvements in the Steam-engine was 
taken out in the same year as Arkwright's patent for Spinning with 
rollers, viz., 1769 — one of the most brilliant eras in the annals of in- 
ventive genius — when Black and Priestley were making their great 
discoveries in chemistry; when Ilargrcaves, Arkwright, and Watt 
revolutionized the processes of manufacture ; when Smcaton and 
Brindley executed prodigies of engineering science. 



THE COTTON MANUFACTUEE: 

HARGREAVES AND HIS SPINNING- JENNY; 
ARKWRIGHT AND THE SPINNING-FRAME. 

Scarcely a century has elapsed since a native of Lan- 
cashire, of very humble origin, began to devote his at- 
tention to the application of machinery to the preparation 
and spinning of raw cotton for weft. In the year 1760, 
or soon after, a Carding Engine^ not very different from 
that now in use, was contrived by James Hargreaves, an 
^ untaught weaver, living near Church, in Lancashire ; and 
in 1767 the Spinning' J enny was invented by the same 
person. This machine, as at first formed, contained eight 
spindles, which were made to revolve by means of bands 
from a horizontal wheel. Subsequent improvements in- 
creased the power of the Spinning- Jenny to eighty spin- 
dles ; when the saving of labor which it thus occasioned 
produced considerable alarm among those persons who 
had employed the old mode of spinning, and a party of 
them broke into Hargreaves' house, and destroyed his 
machine. The great advantage of the invention was so 
apparent, however, that it was soon again brought into 
use, and nearly superseded the employment of the old 
spinning-wheel, when a second rising took place of the 
persons whose labor was thus superseded by it. They 
went through the country destroying, whereA^er they 
could find them, both Carding and Spinning Machines, by 
which means the manufacture was for a time driven away 
from Lancashire to Nottingham. 

Hargreaves stated that he derived the idea of the Jenny 
from the following incident : Seeing a hand-wheel with a 
single spindle overturned, he remarked that the spindle, 
which was before horizontal, Avas then vertical; and as 
it continued to revolve, he drew the roving of wool to- 
ward him into a thread. It then seemed to Hargreaves 
plausible that, if something could be applied to hold the 
roving as the finger and thumb did, and that contrivance 



arkwright's spinning-frame. 297 

to travel backward on wheels, six or eight, or even twelve 
threads, from as many spindles, might be spun at once. 
This was done, and succeeded; but Hargreaves, driven 
by mobs, as we have described, to Nottingham, unable 
to bear up against such ill treatment, there died in ob- 
scurity and distress, having given the property of his 
Jenny to the Strutts, who thereon laid the foundation of 
their industrial success and opulence. 

The cotton yarn produced by the common spinning- 
wheel and spinning-jenny could, however, not be made 
sufficiently strong to be used as warp, for which purpose 
linen yarn was employed ; and it was not until another 
machine, invented by an individual of as humble origin 
as Hargreaves, was brought into successful operation, 
that the above disadvantage was overcome. This ma- 
chine, which took up what Hargreaves had begun, waf-; 
the Spinning -Frame^ invented by Richard Arkwright, 
who was born at Preston in 1732, and, being the young-^ 
est of a poor family of thirteen children, he received but 
little education, if he ever was at school at all. He was 
bred to the business of a barber, which he carried on in 
the town of Bolton. " Two shops are mentioned as hav- 
ing been occupied by Arkwright when he lived in Bol- 
ton : one in the passage leading to the Old Millstone Inn, 
Deansgate ; the other, a small shop in Churchgate. The 
lead cistern in which his customers washed after being 
shaved is still in existence, and is in the possession of 
Mr. Peter Skelton, of Bolton."* 

About 1760 Arkwright became a dealer in hair, which 
he collected by traveling up and down the country, and, 
having dressed the hair, he sold it again to the wig-mak- 
ers. He kept a better article than either of his compet- 
itors in the same trade, and he had a profitable secret 
method of dyeing hair. 

Up to this time the English cotton cloths (called cali- 
co from Calicut in India, the place of their production) 
had only the weft of cotton, the warp, or longitudinal 
threads, being of linen ; it being impossible, by any means 
then known, to spin the cotton with a sufficiently hard 
twist to be used as a warp. The faw materials were 
then delivered by the master-manufacturers to cottagers 

* JJfe and Times of Samuel Crompton. Bv Gilbert J. French, 1 859. 
N 2 



298 arkwright's inventions. 

living in the villages of the district, who both carded and 
spun the cotton, and wove the cloth. The demand for 
these cottons soon became so great, that, although there 
were 50,000 spindles constantly at work in Lancashire 
alone, each occupying an individual spinner, they could 
not supply the quantity of thread required. To remedy 
this state of things, several ingenious individuals had 
thought of spinning by machinery instead of by the one- 
thread wheel. A Mr. Wyatt, of Lichfield, is stated to 
have invented a spinnmg apparatus as early as 1733, and 
had factories built with his machines both at Birming- 
ham and Northampton: but these undertakings failed; 
the machines perished, and no model or description of 
them was preserved.* Wyatt's claim to the mvention 
has, however, been disproved. A Mr. Laurence Earn- 
shaw, of Mottram in Cheshire, in 1753, invented a ma- 
chine to spin and reel cotton at one operation, which he 
showed to his neighbors, and then destroyed it, through 
the generous ajDprehension that he might deprive the 
poor of bread.f 

Arkwright had also turned his attention to mechanics. 
His first efibrt was an attempt to discover the perpetual 
motion ; and in seeking for a person to make him some 
wheels for a project of this kind, he got acquainted with 
one Kay, a clockmaker at Warrington, where they jointly 
devised a model of a machine for spinning cotton thread. 
Next year, 1768, they began to erect this machine at 
Preston, in the parlor of the dwelling-house attached to 
the Free Grammar School. Arkwright and Kay, how- 
ever, soon left Preston, dreading the hostility of the Lan- 
cashire people to their attempt to introduce spinning by 
machinery. They next removed to Nottingham, where, 
wanting capital, Arkwright took his model to Messrs. 
Need and Strutt, stocking-weavers of that place ; and 
Mr. Strutt, being a man of scientific acquirements, was 
satisfied of the great value of the proposed machine, and 
he and Mr. Need entered into partnership with Ark- 
wright, who, in 1769, took out a patent for the machine 
as its inventor.J A spinning-mill, driven by horse-power, 

* Manchester Memoirs^ Second Series, vol. iii. 

t Paines' History of Lancashire, vol. iii. 

t It is related that when Arkwright applied to Mr. Strutt, his ma- 



arkwright's water-frame, or throstle. 299 

was at the same time erected, and filled with the frames, 
being (unless we include Wyatt's at Lichfield) the first 
work of the kind that had been known in this country. 
In 1771 Arkwright and his partners established another 
mill at Cromford, in Derbyshire, the machinery in which 
was set in motion by a water-wheel ; and in 1775 he took 
out a second patent, with additions to his original appa- 
ratus.* 

The most important of Arkwright's contrivances was 
a device for drawing out the cotton from a coarse to a 
finer and harder-twisted thread, and so rendering it fit to 
be used for warp as well as weft. This was most ingen- 
iously managed by the application of a principle which 
had not yet been introduced in any other mechanical op- 
eration. The cotton was, in the first place, drawn off 
from the skewers on which it was placed by one pair of 
rollers, which were made to move at a comparatively 
slow rate, and which formed it into threads of a first or 
coarser quality ; but at a little distance behind the first 
was placed a second pair of rollers, revolving three, four, 
or five times as fast, which took it up when it had passed 
through the others, the effect of which would be to re- 
duce the thread to a degree of fineness so many times 
greater than that which it originally had. The first pair 
of rollers might be regarded as the feeders of the second, 
which could receive no more than the others sent to 
them ; and that, again, could be no more than these oth- 
ers themselves took up from the skewers. As the sec- 
ond pair of rollers, therefore, revolved, we will say, five 
times for every revolution of the first pair — or, which is 
the same thing, required for their consumption in a given 
time five times the length of thread that the first did — 

chines were much embarrassed by the fibres of the wool sticking to 
the roller. This circumstance greatly annoyed Mr. Arkwright ; and 
it is said that Mr. Strutt engaged to remove the evil on condition of 
participating in the profits of the result. They repaired to the mill, 
when Mr. Strutt, taking a lump of chalk out of his pocket, and apply- 
ing it to the roller, the sticking was instantly prevented. 

* In Arkwright's apparatus, which was a combination of the card- 
ing and. spinning machinery, this first part of the process was some- 
what modified ; but the principle of the two pairs of rollers, the one 
revolving faster than the other, which forms the peculiarity of the ma- 
chine, was employed as here described. 



300 SPINNING BY ROLLERS. 

they could obviously obtain so much length by drawing 
out the common portion of cotton into thread of five 
times the original fineness. Nothing could be more beau- 
tiful or more effective than this contrivance, which, with 
an additional provision for giving the proper twist to the 
thread, constitutes the water-frame, or throstle, so called 
from its being originally moved by water-power. 

Spinning by rollers was an entirely original idea. Ark- 
wright stated that he accidentally derived the first hint 
of his invention from seeing a red-hot iron bar elongated 
by being made to pass between rollers ; and though there 
is no mechanical analogy between that operation and the 
process of spinning, it is not difficult to imagine that, by 
reflecting upon it, and placing the subject in different 
points of view, he might be led to this invention, which 
he particularly claimed as his own. Of other machines 
included in his patent he was rather the improver than 
the inventor ; and the original spinning-machine for coarse 
thready the Spinning-Jenny, Arkwright admitted to have 
been first conceived by Hargreaves. 

Other parties disputed Arkwright's property in his in- 
ventions ; his patents were invaded by the cotton-spin- 
ners, and he could only enforce his rights by long and 
costly litigation. Doubtless, to him alone belongs the 
merit both of having combined the different parts of the 
spinning machinery, of having first brought it into actual 
use on an extensive scale, and demonstrated its power 
and value. The great scene of his operations was at 
Cromford, in Derbyshire, about twenty miles from Man- 
chester, where the work-people hailed him as a bene- 
factor, and where water-power without limit was found 
to drive his machinery. It was not, however, until the 
lapse of five years from their erection that any profit was 
realized by the works at Cromford ; but from that time 
Arkwright grew wealthy, notwithstanding his patent had 
been canceled by law. He built for himself a stately 
castellated mansion amid the scenes of industry where 
he had raised up his own fortune. He served as high- 
sheriff of Derbyshire in 1786, and received knighthood 
on presenting an address of congratulation to King 
George IH. 

Sir Richard Arkwright died at Cromford in 1792, in 



arkwright's cotton-mills. 



301 



his sixtieth year. A beautiful monument by Chantrey 
has been erected over his remains in Cromford Chapel. 

To the close of his life, the management of his fac- 
tories was his daily occupation, and even amusement. 
He scarcely took any out-door recreation, but employed 
his time either in superintending the daily concerns of 
these establishments, or in improving his machinery. His 
wealth increased to such an extent that, besides possess- 
ing, exclusive of his mill property, one of the largest 
landed estates in England, he presented on two occasions 
each of his ten children with the sum of ten thousand 
pounds. He left at his death half a million of money. 

And thus it was that, from a poor barber, Arkwright 
raised himself not merely to rank and affluence, but to 
be one of the foremost founders of a new branch of 
national industry, and in a wonderfully short space of 
time to assume the very first place among the manufac- 
turers of his country. 

Cromford mills are delightfully placed on the Derwent, 
in one of the most picturesque dales in Derbyshire. Near 
the mills is Willersley Castle, where Arkwright lived in 
princely style. The mansion commands a fine prospect 
of the industrial valley. 




Arkwl'ight's Mills, from Cromford Heights. 



302 THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 



SAMUEL CROMPTON AND THE SPINNING-MULE. 

Hitherto our account of the Cotton manufacture has 
been chiefly illustrated by the inventions of Sir Richard 
Arkwright; contemporary with whom, though by the 
present generation only recognized as somewhat ob- 
scurely connected with the improvement of spuming ma- 
chinery, was Samuel Crompton. " It is scarcely known 
that his discovery gave a wonderful impulse to the in- 
dustry, and consequently to the wealth and population 
of South Lancashire, causing its insignificant villages to 
attain the importance of large and populous towns."* 

Samuel Crompton was born December 3, 1753, of 
an ancient family, traceable to the time of Henry HI. 
Crompton's parents resided at Firwood, near Bolton, 
occupying a farm, and, as was the custom of that time, 
employing their leisure hours in carding, spinning, and 
weaving. They removed when Samuel was five years 
old to a portion of the neighboring ancient mansion call- 
ed Hall-in-the-Wood. The boy was well educated at 
Bolton ; but it is probable that, owing to his mother's 
exigencies, "his little legs became accustomed to the 
loom ahnost as soon as they were long enough to touch 
the treadles." At the age of sixteen years he continued 
to reside with his mother, occupied at the loom, and at- 
tending an evening school at Bolton, where he advanced 
his knowledge of algebra, mathematics, and trigonom- 
etry. For six years previous to the above date, the in- 
creased demand for fine cottons led to a great scarcity 
of yarn for weft ; and the invention of Kay's fly-shuttle, 
by doubling the speed of the weaver's operations, dis- 
turbed the natural balance between the quantity of yarn 
spun and the weavers' demand for it. 

Such was the scarcity of yarn when, in 1767, Har- 

* Life and Times of Samuel Crompton^ by Gilbert J. French, 1859 ; 
whence, by permission, the leading data of this sketch are derived. 
This memoir is written in a bold and manly spirit, befitting the sub- 
ject which it so eloquently rescues from neglect. It is the substance 
of two papers read to the members of the Bolton Mechanics' Institu- 
tion by Mr. French, who has generously placed at the Society's dispos- 
al any profits that may arise from the publication of this edition of his 
work, which, we are happy to add, was sold within a few weeks. 



SAMUEL CkOMPTON, InVENTOE OP THE SPINNING MULE. 




The IIall-in-the-Wood, near Bolton. 



THE HALL-IN-THE-WOOD, NEAR BOLTON. 305 

greaves invented the Jenny (see page 296). "And two 
years afterward, when only sixteen years of age, Samuel 
Crompton spun on one of these machines, with eight 
spindles, the yarn which he afterward wove into quilt- 
ing; and thus he was occupied for the five following 
years." At his solitary loom in the old Hall-in-the-Wood 
he became prematurely a thinker ; and, debarred from 
company, he cultivated a taste for music, which led to 
the first trial of his mechanical skill in making a violin, 
which he commenced learning to play upon. He was 
master of Hargreaves' invention, the Jenny ; and he was 
personally known to Arkwright, whose reputation as an 
inventor now rang through Lancashire. "This Bolton 
barber," says Mr. French, " without previous experience 
as a spinner, was now, in 1771 (Crompton being then 
eighteen years of age), building his famous mill at Crom- 
ford, in Derbyshire, and already obtaining the reputation 
of great wealth ; while Samuel was passing half his work- 
ing hours in piecing up the broken ends of the bad yarn, 
which prevented him from making satisfactory progress 
with his daily stint of weaving — for his mother insisted 
upon a certain amount of work being finished every day. 
A failure inevitably subjected him to her somewhat sharp 
vituperation ; and if he succeeded in his allotted task, it 
was at the expense of so much time lost in mending the 
ever-breaking ends of his miserable yarn, that none re- 
mained for his darling fiddle, or for the few books he now 
desired to study." 

The Hall-in-the-Wood is situated about a mile from 
Bolton, on elevated rocky ground, around which sweeps 
the Eagley brook or river ; but few of the fine old trees 
remain to show that the name of the mansion was once 
entirely appropriate. The building, of post and plaster 
work, is mostly of the end of the fifteenth century ; but 
the south front and porch are of stone, and the latter 
bears the date 1648. The dining-hall, and the room in 
which Crompton worked, now occupied as a bedroom, 
retain their original handsome windows in small leaden 
quarries. Here, in the year 1774, he commenced the 
construction of the Spinning Machine, which for many 
years was known as "the Hall-i'-th'-Wood Wheels." It 
took him five entire years to mature his improvement. 



306 crompton's inventive labors. 

during whicli time he worked entirely aTone, with no one 
in his confidence to whom he could look for sympathy 
or assistance ; and he tells us that he succeeded at the 
expense of every shilling he had in the world. All this 
labor was in addition to his regular every-day work; 
he toiled late and early. "Strange and unaccountable 
sounds," says Mr. French, " were heard in the old Hall 
at most untimely hours; lights were seen in unusual 
places ; and a rumor became current that the place was 
haunted." Samuel was, however, soon discovered to be 
himself the embodied spirit (of invention) which had 
caused so much fear and trouble to the family. His dif- 
ficulties were great, and the tools which he possessed 
insufticient for the purpose ; but, by devoting every shil- 
ling he could spare to the purchase of the requisite tools, 
and aided by his clasp-knife, to which he is said to have 
been greatly indebted, he at length triumphed. It is re- 
lated that Crompton and his violin were frequently em- 
ployed in the orchestra of the Bolton theatre at Is, Qd. 
each night ; " but, small as it was, that payment greatly 
assisted him in procuring the tools which he required for 
his mechanical operations." 

In our account of previous inventions for Cotton Spin- 
ning, we have already mentioned Kay's production of 
the fly-shuttle in 1738 ; " and in the same year," says Mr. 
French, " by a curious and interesting coincidence, and, 
so far as can be learned, without any reference to the 
recent improvement in weaving, a patent was obtained 
by Louis Paul for spinning wool and cotton by passing 
previously-prepared slivers between pairs of rollers turn- 
ed with different degrees of velocity." Mr. Baines, how- 
ever, whom we have already quoted, stated that Wyatt, 
and not Paul, was the inventor of spinning by rollers. 
This opinion remained undisturbed until September, 
1858, when Mr. Robert Cole, F.S.A., read to the British 
Association at the Leeds meeting a communication enti- 
tled " Some Account of Louis Paul and his invention of 
the Machine for spinning Cotton and Wool by Rollers, 
and his claim to such invention to the exclusion of John 
Wyatt ;" proving very satisfactorily that Louis Paul was 
the original inventor of the method of spinning by rollers, 
and that John Wyatt, whose family have claimed the 



HIS MUSLIN WHEEL. 307 

credit of the invention for him (he never appears to have 
made any such claim himself), had really little or nothing 
to do with the invention, though he certainly had a pe- 
cuniary interest in working it. The invention, though 
wonderfully ingenious, and supported by some of the dis- 
tinguished men of the time, languished and died. 

It next appears that Highs, or Hays, a reed-maker at 
Leigh, took up the plan of attempting to spin by rollers 
in 1767, and he was assisted in his experiment by Kay, 
the clockmaker, but with little success. Next appeared 
Arkwright, who is said to have adopted the plans of 
Highs and Kay, and the Spinning Jenny of Hargreaves. 

Such was the position of Cotton Spinning, when, in 
1774, Samuel Crompton commenced the experiments 
which eventuated in hi^ Hall -in -the -Wood Wheels or 
Muslin Wheel, because its capabilities rendered it avail- 
able for yarn for making muslins ; and, finally, it got the 
name of the Mule^ from its partaking of the two leading 
features of Arkwright's machine and Hargreaves' Spin- 
ning Jenny. Crompton' s first suggestion was to intro- 
duce a single pair of rollers, viz., a top and a bottom, 
which he expected would elongate the rove by pressure, 
like the process by which metals are drawn out, and 
which he observed in the wire-drawing for reeds used in 
the loom. In this he was disappointed, and afterward 
adopted a second pair of rollers, the latter pair revolving 
at a slower speed than the former, and thus producing a 
draught of one inch in three or four. This was neither 
more nor less than a modification of Mr. Arkwright's 
roller-beam. But Crompton assured Mr. Kennedy, his 
nearest friend, that when he constructed his machine he 
knew nothing of Arkwright's discovery ;* and the rude- 
ness of Crompton's machine, mostly of wood, shows that 
he was not acquainted with Arkwright's superior rollers 
and fixtures in iron, and their connection by clock-work. 
Mr. Kennedy says : 

Crompton's first machine contained only about twenty or thirty 
spindles. He finally put dents of brass reed- wire into his under rollers, 
and thus obtained a fluted roller. But the great and important in- 
vention of Crompton was his spindle-carriage, and the principle of the 
thread having no strain upon it until it was completed. The carriage 

* Paper read to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manches- 
ter in 1830. 



308 CEOMPTON S SPIXNING-MULE. 

with the spindles could, by the movement of the hand and knee, re- 
cede just as the rollers delivered out the elongated thread in a soft 
state, so that it would allow of a considerable stretch before the thread 
had to encounter the stress of winding on the spindle. This was the 
comer-stone of the merits of his invention. 

Just as Crompton had completed his first Mule in 1779, 
and was about to put it to actual work, the Blackburn 
spinners and weavers, who had previously driven poor 
Hargreaves from his home, renewed their tumults, and 
destroyed every jenny round Blackburn, except such as 
had less than twenty spindles. To save his new machine 
from destruction, Crompton took it to pieces, and con- 
cealed the various parts in a loft near the clock in the old 
Hall. There they remained hid for many weeks ere he 
dared to put them together again ; but in the same year 
the wheel was completed, and the yarn spun upon it used 
for fine muslins ; and one of the earliest results of this 
success was Crompton's purchase of a silver watch out 
of the wheel's earnings. In 1780 he married, and the 
young couple went to reside in a cottage attached to the 
old Hall ; but Crompton continued to occupy one of the 
large rooms in the mansion, and there operated upon the 
Mule, " with a success which startled the manufacturing 
world by the production of yarn which, both in jflneness 
and firmness^ had hitherto been unattainable by any 
means or at any price." Assisted by his amiable young 
wife, he industriously spun at the Hall, with the greatest 
possible privacy, small quantities of the much-coveted 
yarn, producing week after week higher counts and an 
improved quality, for which he readily obtained his own 
price. The supply, however, could not satisfy one hund- 
redth part of the demand : the old Hall was besieged by 
cunning persons, who came not only to purchase, but 
also to get at the mystery of the wonderful new wheel. 
Admission w^as denied ; w^hen many climbed up to the 
windows outside by the aid of harrows and ladders to 
look in at the new machine. Crompton blocked the in- 
truders out with a screen ; but one inquisitive seeker con- 
cealed himself for some days in a loft, and watched Sam- 
uel at work by means of a gimlet-hole pierced through 
the ceiling. Even Arkwright traveled sixty miles to en- 
deavor to discover the secret of the new wheel, which all 
bat eclipsed his water-frame. 



crompton's spinning-mule. 309 

Crompton now found it impossible to retain the secret 
of his machine : he had no patent, nor the means of pur- --' 
chasing one ; when, rather than destroy the mule, he 
gave it to the public, upon condition of certain " manu- 
facturing friends" paying him a sum of money, which 
did not exceed <£60 ; yet the list of half-guinea sub- 
scribers of this paltry amount contains "• the names of 
many Bolton firms now of great wealth and eminence as 
mule-spinners, whose colossal fortunes may be said to 
have been based upon this singularly small investment" 
{French), The money received merely sufficed to re- 
place the machine which Crompton had given up; for 
his time, study, and toil he received not a shilling. After 
the secret had been made public, many persons who had 
promised subscriptions refused to pay, and even de- 
nounced Crompton as an ' impostor. This shameful / 
treatment made him, to some extent, a moody and mis- 
trustful man. In the five following years the Mule was 
generally employed for fine spinning throughout the 
manufacturing districts of England and Ireland, and par- 
ticularly Scotland. Before 1785 Crompton removed to 
a farm-house near Bolton, and there besides farming, he 
worked secretly at his machine in the upper story of his 
house. Curious visitors still came; and among them 
was Mr. (afterward the first Sir Robert) Peel, who at- 
, tempted to get at the Mule in Crompton's absence, but ^ 
was defeated. He ofiered the inventor a lucrative situa- 
tion, and even a partnership, in his establishment, both 
which Crompton declined to accept. 

In 1800 a subscription was opened at Manchester to 
reward Crompton, but it did not exceed £500. With 
this sum he rented a factory story in Bolton, and there 
had two Mules, with the power to turn the machinery. 
Crompton now toiled onward : he submitted his inven- 
tion to the Royal Society and the Society of Arts, but 
by neither was it entertained. He had started the 
stream of manufacturing prosperity, but no portion of it 
had reached the poor inventor. In the hope of some re- 
muneration, he visited the manufacturing districts of 
England, Scotland, and Ireland, to ascertain the results 
of his invention, when he found the number of mule- 
spindles in use to be 4,600,000, spinning 40,000,000 of '' 



310 NEGLECT OF GROMPTOX. 

pounds of cotton wool in a year. Armed with these 
' data, and a certificate signed by many manufacturing 
and machine-making firms, Crompton petitioned Parlia- 
ment for public remuneration, " and, after much delay, 
the paltry sum of £5000 was granted him." In 1825 a 
memorial was presented to Parliament for a second 
grant, but without effect. On June 26, 1827, Crompton 
died, in his seventy-fourth year, and was followed to the 
grave by a host of Bolton worthies. Yet, in the next 
page of his very interesting volume, Mr. French tells us, 

From that day little has been said or thought of Samuel Crompton. 
Men have been content to employ his great invention for their indi- 
vidual profit and for the benefit of the human race, but the memory of 
the inventor has passed from the public mind almost like the shadow 
of a summer cloud. The older manufacturers of the country have 
been for the most part naturally willing to forget the man to whom 
they were so greatly indebted, because they could not remember him 
without taking shame to themselves for the injustice and ingratitude 
with which he had been treated. 

Without underrating the importance of other inven- 
tions, it may safely be asserted that Crompton's Mule is 
the fulcrum which sustains that mighty lever, the Cotton 
Trade, the most valuable and the most powerful of our 
national resources. As the Jenny is now almost disused, 
and all the finer yarns are spun exclusively upon the 
Mule, its importance and value continue to increase. 
During eighty years the principle of Crompton's inven- 
tion has remained unchanged, while modifications, im- 
provements, and auxiliaries have increased its productive 
power a hundred-fold. In its infancy it was carefully 
tended by the human hand ; then it was nursed by water 
power ; next steam lifted the water back again to dupli- 
cate its work in turning the young machinery. But 
steam was not long employed in this secondary office; 
and as the powers and capabilities of the steam-engine 
were developed, they were laid hold of by the cotton- 
spinner, and riveted to his machinery, thus raising the 
art to a stupendous power. 

Meanwhile, the results of Crompton's genius have been 
practically commemorated upon the site of his invention. 
Near the Hall-in-the-Wood rises an octagonal chimney- 
shaft 366 feet in height, in connection with steam-engines 
and furnaces in a huge factory, where some thousands of 



cartwright's power-loom. 311 

men and boys are employed in making mule-spinning 
machinery, and in the weekly production of thousands 
of mule-spindles. The old Hall has become the veritable 
centre of the existing cotton -manufacturing district. 
" Could we," says Mr. French, " tie a cord twenty miles 
in length to the top of the tall chimney that marks the 
spot, and sweep it round the country, the circle thus 
formed would embrace the populous towns and teeming 
villages engaged in spinning and weaving cotton : they 
radiate from that centre with compass-like regularity, 
Manchester, Preston, Oldham, and Blackburn being the 
cardinal points." 

To this small spot of earth (remarkable only the other day for 
nothing beyond the sterility of its surface), and to its indefatigable' 
inhabitants, Providence appears to have assigned the particular and 
special duty of clothing mankind. In furtherance of this work, they 
have dragged to the surface much of the mineral wealth which it con- 
tained, and have perforated it with thirty miles of subterranean canals, 
and countless miles of buried railways. »They have crusted over its 
surface with factories and mills. Wealth, which can scarcely be 
reckoned, is represented by millions of spindles, which, with their 
auxiliary engines, are revolving day by day. The land on which 
they stand has been quadrupled in value. Railways spread over it 
like a close net-work of iron ; and it is covered with a conglomerated 
mass of towns and villages, so large and so closely set together that 
in many instances their longer streets meet each other, and populous 
places said to be seven miles asunder are really connected by continu- 
ous rows of gas-lights. 

Many great and active minds have been at work to produce this 
unprecedented result ; but to one^ more than all others collectively, it 
is due. It was the mind of Samuel Crompton which, under Prov- 
idence, vivified this crowded area, and now fills it with a vitality not 
the less true that its action is unseen and unacknowledged. — French's 
Life and Times of Samuel Crompton. 



DR. CARTWRIGHT AND THE POWER-LOOM. 

This stupendous weaving-machine, a crowning achieve- 
ment of the Cotton Manufacture, we owe to the genius 
of Edmund Cartwright, born, in 1743, at Marnham, in 
Nottinghamshire. He was educated for the Church in 
the University of Oxford, and pubUshed a volume of 
poems while yet a young man. He had reached his for- 
tieth year before he had given any attention to mechanics. 



312 POWER-LOOMS. 

Happening, in 1784, to be at Matlock, in the company of 
some gentlemen of Manchester, he maintained the prac- 
ticability of inventing a machine to weave the vast addi- 
tional quantity of cotton spun by Arkwright's machinery, 
and this Cartwright asserted was not a whit less prac- 
ticable than the construction of the Automaton Chess- 
player then exhibiting in London. Soon afterward it 
occurred to Cartwright that, as in plain weaving, accord- 
ing to the conception he then had of the business, there 
could be only three movements to follow each other in 
succession, there could be little difficulty in producing 
and repeating them. He then employed a carpenter and 
smith to construct for him upon this principle a machine, 
and getting a weaver to put in the warp, to his great de- 
light a piece of cloth was the produce. The warp was 
laid perpendicularly ; the reed fell with a force of at least 
half a hundred-weight and the springs which threw the 
shuttle were strong enough to have thrown a Congreve 
rocket. Conceiving this to be a valuable invention, in 
1785 Cartwright secured it by patent. He then conde- 
scended to see how other persons wove (for he had never 
before seen a loom), when he was astonished at their 
easy modes of operation compared with his powerful 
machine, which he did not patent till 1787. 

Some time after, a manufacturer, on seeing Cartwright's 
first loom at work, observed that, wonderful as was the 
inventor's mechanical skill, he would be baffled in weav- 
ing patterns in checks, ^. 6., combining in the same web 
a pattern or fancy figure with the crossing colors to form 
the check. Cartwright made no reply to the manufac- 
turer's observation, but some weeks after showed him 
a piece of muslin beautifully woven in checks by ma- 
chinery. 

After this Dr. Cartwright made some valuable im- 
provements in the combing of wool by machinery, in 
rope-making, and other departments of agriculture and 
manufactures. Even the steam-engine engaged his at- 
tention ; and he used frequently to tell his son that, if he 
lived to be a man, he would see both ships and land- 
carriages impelled by steam. As early as 1793 he con- 
structed a model of a steam-engine, attached to a barge, 
which he explained, in the presence of his family, to 



CALICO-PKINTING AND THE PEELS. 3 IS 

Robert Fulton, Avhose zeal and activity afterward, as is 
well known, perfected the project of steam navigation in 
America. Even so late as 1823, Dr. Cartwright, then in 
his seventy-ninth year, contrived a plan of propelling 
land-carriages by steam. 

Dr. Cartwright was defrauded of the pecuniary profits 
from his great invention of the power-loom by persons 
who devised contrivances for the same purpose slightly 
different Irom his. A manufactory containing 500 of 
Cartwright's machines was destroyed by fire almost im- 
mediately after it was built. On these and other ac* 
counts, the power-loom only began to be extensively in- 
troduced about 1801, the year in which Cartwright's 
patent expired. He was, however, in some degree sub- . 
sequently compensated by a Parliamentary grant of 
£10,000. 

Power-looms were not immediately introduced into 
fectories. They remained an unprofitable speculation 
until it w^as discovered, in 1803, that the warp might be 
dressed before being put into the loom, and the service 
of the man employed for that purpose dispensed with. 
The construction of the machine, and the method of 
dressing, have been improved since that time, and cloth 
is now woven by the help of steam with a rapidity and 
to an extent formerly unknown. 

A steam-engine of forty or sixty horse-power gives 
motion to thousands of rollers, spindles, and bobbins for 
spinning yarns, and works four or five hundred looms 
besides. This gigantic spinner and weaver needs very 
little assistance from man. It undertakes, and faithfully 
discharges, all the heavy work of putting shafts, wheels, 
and pulleys in motion, of throwing the shuttle, working 
the treadles, driving home the weft, and turning round 
the warp and cloth beams. One man may now do as 
much work as two or three hundred ninety years ago. 



CALICO-PRINTING AND THE RISE OF THE PEELS. 

The process of Calico-printing is not confined to cot- 
ton cloth, as the former term would lead us to suppose ; 

O 



314 CALICO-PRINTING. 

it is applied also to linen, silk, and woolen cloth. The 
art is supposed to have originated in India, and to have 
been known in that country for a very long period. From 
a passage in Pliny's Natural History, it is evident that 
Calico-printing was understood and practiced in Egypt 
in his time, but was unknown in Italy. ''- There exists," 
says Pliny, " in Egypt a wonderful method of dyeing. 
The white cloth is stained in various places, not with 
dye-stuffs, but Avith substances which have the property 
of absorbing (fixing) colors. These applications are not 
visible upon the cloth ; but when the pieces are dipped 
in a hot caldron containing the dye, they are drawn out 
an instant after dyed. The remarkable circumstance is, 
that though there be only one dye in the vat, yet differ- 
ent colors appear on the cloth; nor can the colors be 
again removed." This description of Pliny evidently 
applies to Calico-printing. It is little more than a cen- 
tury and three quarters since the art was transferred from 
India to Europe, and little more than a century and a 
quarter since it was first understood in Great Britam, 
where, by the application of machinery and improved 
chemical processes, the rapidity of the execution, and the 
beauty, and variety, and fastness of the colors are mi- 
equaled. In this triumph of art stand pre-eminent the 
family of the Peels. 

At Bamber Bridge, about the year 1763, the art and 
mystery of Calico-printmg in Lancashire was first at- 
tempted by the Claytons. Near Knuydon Brook, about 
two miles east of Blackburn, there lived a tall, robust 
man, whose ordinary dress was a woolen apron, a calf- 
skin waistcoat, and wooden-soled clogs, and whose grisly 
hair was of a reddish color ; he owned forty acres of 
poor grass-land, and three of his sons Avorked each at a 
loom in the dwelling-house. About 1765, one of these 
sons chanced to spoil in the weaving a piece of cloth 
made of linen and thread ; it was therefore unsalable, 
and the father took the spoiled cloth to the Claytons at 
Bamber Bridge, requesting to have it printed of a pat- 
tern for kerchiefs, which was done, and the articles were 
worn by the family. The high price charged for print- 
ing this piece of cloth induced the owner to attempt the 
art himself, which he did in a secret apartment of his 



THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 315 

house at Peel Fold, the name of the above-mentioned 
forty acres of grass-land. The experimenter was Robert 
Peel, father of the first Sir Robert Peel, the great calico- 
printer of Bury in Lancashire, and of Fazely, in Stafibrd- 
shire. 

The first successful experiment was a " Parsley-leaf," 
which Peel engraved upon a pewter plate and transfer- 
red in color to a piece of cloth ; and, as this experiment 
was made in the absence of Peel's family, Mrs. Milton, a 
next-door neighbor, performed the calendering process 
with a flat smoothing-iron. It was requisite that, in ad- 
dition to a sharply-defined vivid impression of the pat- 
tern, the mordant should so bite-in the colors that they 
should resist the dissolving action of soap and water. In 
this, too, the experiment succeeded to admiration ; and 
"Parsley Peel," as he was afterward called, exclaimed, 
with a shout of exclamation, that he was " a made man." 
The women of the family ironed the pieces of cloth in 
the secret room, to prevent prying neighbors seeing what 
they did. But this Robert Peel did more : he was the 
first person to supersede the hand-carding of cotton wool, 
and this he did by using the cards, one fixed in a block 
of wood, and the other slung from hooks fixed in a beam, 
where they remained in the kitchen beams at Peel Fold 
in 1850. Peel's carding-machines were broken by a mob 
of persons who came from Blackburn to Peel Fold for 
that purpose, and they afterward destroyed his works at 
Althain. Peel was at length driven out of the county 
by the violence of his neighbors, and took refuge at Bur- 
ton-on-Trent, in Staffordshire. The son of this humble 
inventor, the first Sir Robert Peel, established his print- 
works at Bury; and in the neighborhood was born his 
son, the great statesman, Sir Robert Peel, whose statue 
has been set up in the market-place of the town of Bury. 

To detail fully the results of the Cotton Manufacture, 
and how largely it has contributed to the financial and 
national greatness of England, would fill a large volume. 
Its salient points have been thus glanced at by Mr. Hen- 
ry Ashworth, in a paper read to the Society of Arts in 
1858. 

The origin of the uses of Cotton is very remote. Its 



316 COTTON-SPINNING MACHINERY. 

production over many parts of the earth is spontaneous, 
and for 3000 years it has been wrought into garments by 
the people of India. This knowledge was also, at a very 
early period, possessed by the people of Egypt and other 
Eastern countries. The Egyptian looms (says Wilkin- 
son) were famed for their line cotton fabrics, and many 
of these were worked with the needle in patterns in 
brilliant colors, but some were woven in the piece. Of 
these last were the cotton fabrics with blue borders, some 
of which are in the Louvre : though their date is uncer- 
tain, they suffice to show that the manufacture was Egyp- 
tian ; and the many dresses painted on the monuments 
of the eighteenth dynasty prove that the most varied 
patterns were used by the Egyptians more than 3000 
years ago, as they were at a later period by the Baby- 
lonians. In Spain, Cotton was known about the tenth 
century, and eventually it found its way to England. 
The Genoese were the first to supply this country with 
the raw material, probably from the Levant ; and the 
Flemish emigrants are thought to have introduced the 
requisite skill to use it. Except, however, for candle- 
wicks, for which use it was imported during the Middle 
Ages, cotton wool Avas not employed as a material for 
manufactures very long before the year 1641, when Man- 
chester purchased cotton wool from Cyprus and Smyrna, 
with which to make fustians and dimities for home con- 
sumption and exportation. 

The arts of Spinning and Weaving appear among the 
earliest inventions of our race. They are mentioned in 
the Scriptures, in the Homeric poems, and by Herodotus, 
Strabo, Arrian, Pliny, and other early historians. Yet, 
strange as it may appear, in past ages we find that no 
mention is made of any improved process. It would 
appear to have been reserved to modern times, and to 
the iDCople of Lancashire, to subvert the old rustic con- 
trivances, and to substitute the mechanical inventions of 
Hargr eaves, Arkwright, and Crompton as the basis of a 
manufacturing system. We owe it to the genius of these 
inventors, subsequently aided by Watt, and carried into 
practical operation by the enterprising efforts of other 
men, that the previously obscure and humble pretensions 
of cotton have been raised from insignificance, and in- 



PROGRESS OF COTTOl!^-SPINNING. 317. 

vested with an importance truly national ; that, along 
with the progress of this manufacture, our population 
has increased beyond any previously-conceived limits, 
the bounds of our industrial pursuits have been im- 
mensely enlarged, and articles of clothing have been ren- 
dered abundant and cheap. Mr. Porter, in his Progress 
of the Nation^ says, "It is to the spinning-jenny and the 
steam-engine that we must look, as having been the true 
moving powers of our fleets and armies, and the chief 
sujDport also of a long-continued agricultural prosperity." 

Among the results of Cotton-Spinning Machinery, the 
diminution of price is as extraordinary as the fineness of 
the fabric. The raw material is now brought from India, 
and manufactured into cloths in England, which, after 
being returned to India, are actually sold there cheaper 
than the produce of the native looms. 

In Cotton Spinning, such is the economy of labor in- 
troduced by the use of machinery, that one man and four 
children will spin as much yarn as was spun by six hund- 
red men and fifty girls eighty years ago. And in the 
present day Cotton is carded, spun, and woven into cloth 
in the same factory; these different operations being 
performed by machinery, the several parts of which are 
all set in motion by a single steam-engine. 

By these combined agencies, the actual value of the Cotton Manu- 
facture, which in 1787 was estimated at £3,304,371, rose in 1833 to 
£31,338,693, according to Mr. Baines, and the capital employed in 
the manufacture was £34,000,000 ; while Mr. M'Culloch, in the Conu 
mercial Dictionary (1849), gives £36,000,000 as the value of the goods 
annually made, and £47,000,000 as the estimate of the capital em- 
ployed. The reports of the cotton manufacture of the United King- 
dom amounted in 1849 to £26,775,135, and in 1858 to £33,421,843. 
Mr. Baines in 1833 estimated the number of persons employed at 
237,000, supporting 1,500,000 by upward of £6,000,000 of annual 
wages; whereas, in 1849, Mr. M'Culloch calculates that 542,000 
spinners, weavers, bleachers, etc., and 80,000 engineers, machine- 
makers, smiths, masons, joiners, etc., were employed at annual wages 
amounting to £17,000,000 for 622,000 workmen. The development 
from 1849 to 1859 has proceeded at a rate at least as great as that 
which preceded. — Sir J. Kay Shuttle worth. 

To these notices of British Cotton Manufactm^e should 
be added some account of the beautiful products of the 
Indian art. Dr. Royle pictures the native woman spin- 
ning thread for those wonderful fabrics to which the 
names of " dew of night," " running water," are figura- 



318 THE COTTON-GIN. 

lively applied. He describes lier first carding her cotton 
with the jawbone of a boalee fish ; then separating the 
seeds by a small iron roller, worked backward and for- 
ward on a flat board ; then w ith a small bone reducing 
it to the state of a downy fleece ; and fijially w^orking it 
into thread iii the warm, moist atmosphere of a tropical 
morning or evening, sometimes over a shallow vessel of 
water, the evaporation from which helps to impart the 
necessary moisture. Her spindle is delicately made of 
iron, with a ball of clay attached, to give it the requisite 
weight in turning ; and it revolves on a piece of hard 
shell, imbedded in another lump of clay to avoid friction. 
In spite of her delicate fingers and all her Old World in- 
genuity, the ruthless Manchester manufacturer, with his 
mules and Australian-grown cotton, hastens to supersede 
her ; and so, one after another, die out the arts of our 
older civilization, leaving to the governed and the gov- 
ernors of the East the mighty task of founding a new 
system, and new means of employment, upon the wreck 
left by the conquests of machinery and steam. 

The weaving art is similarly primitive in India ; but 
the very fine muslins are viewed as curiosities, and made 
in small quantities, so that their use is limited almost 
exclusively to the princes of the land. 

Note. — The first operation to be performed in Cotton, after it is 
carried from the field, is to cleanse it from the seeds. Cotton was 
long cultivated in America under the serious disadvantage that the 
whole crop was to be cleansed of its seeds by hand. In 1795 Eli 
Whitney of Massachusetts invented the machine known as the Cotton- 
gin, by which the seeds could be extracted at an infinite saving of la- 
bor and expense ; and this invention gave an impetus to the cultiva- 
tion in our Southern States which has brought the crop up from 
189,316 pounds in 1791 to 2,000,000,000 in 1859. Gins are of two 
kinds. The Roller-gin consists essentially of two small cylinders re- 
volving in contact, or nearly so, with each other. The cotton is drawn 
between these rollers, while the seeds, being too large to pass, are left 
behind, and fall out on one side. The Saw-gin, invented by Mr. 
Whitney, is intended for those sorts of cotton the seeds of which ad- 
here too strongly to be se]:)arated by the former method. It consists 
of a receiver, having one side covered with strong parallel wires, placed 
like those of a cage and about an eighth of an inch apart. Between 
these wires enter an equal number of circular saws, revolving on a 
common axis. The teeth of these saws entangle the cotton and draw 
it out through the grating of wires, while the seeds are prevented by 
their size from passing. The cotton thus extricated is swept off from 
the teeth of the saws by a revolving cylindrical brush, and the seeds 
fall out at the bottom of the receiver. — Am. Ed. 



JOHN LOMBE AND THE FIEST SILK- 
THEOWING MILL IN ENGLAND. 

To the Emperor Justinian we owe the introduction 
into Europe of the labors of the silk-worm, which, until 
his time, had been wholly confined to China. The means 
by which the secret of obtaining silk was conveyed to 
the emperor displayed furtive ingenuity, which bears 
some analogy to the stratagem by which the manufacture 
was conveyed to England. It appears that two Persian 
monks, employed as missionaries from India, having pen- 
etrated into China, " here, amid their pious occupations, 
viewed with a curious eye the common dress of the Chi- 
nese, the manufactures of silk, and the myriads of silk- 
worms, whose education, cither on trees or in houses, had 
once been considered the labor of queens. They soon 
discovered that it was impracticable to transplant the 
short-lived insect ; but that in the egg a numerous prog- 
eny might be preserved, and multiplied in a distant cli- 
mate." On their return to the West, instead of commu- 
nicating the knowledge they had acquired to their own 
countrymen, they proceeded on to Constantinople, and 
there imparted to Justinian the secret hitherto so well 
preserved by the Chinese, that silk was produced by a 
species of worm ; and they added that the eggs might 
be successfully transported, and the insects propagated 
in his dominions. They likewise explained to the em- 
peror the modes of preparing and manufacturing the slen- 
der filament — mysteries hitherto altogether unknown, or 
but imperfectly understood in Europe. By the promise 
of a great reward, the monks were induced to return to 
China ; and there, with much difficulty, they succeeded 
in obtaining a quantity of silk-worms' eggs ; these they 
concealed in a hollow cane, and at length, in the year 
552, conveyed them in safety to Constantinople. The 
eggs were hatched in the proper season by the warmth 
of manure, and the worms were fed with the leaves of 



320 EARLY SILK CULTURE. 

the wild mulberry-tree. These worms in due time spun 
their silk, and propagated, under the careful attendance 
of the monks, who also instructed the Romans in the 
whole process of manufacturing their production. 

The insects thus produced were the progenitors of all 
the generations of silk-worms which have since been rear- 
ed in Europe and the western parts of Asia — of the count- 
less myriads whose constant and successive labors are 
engaged in supplying a great and still increasing de- 
mand. A caneful of eggs of an Oriental insect thus be- 
came the means of establishing a manufacture which fash- 
ion and luxury had already rendered important, and of 
saving vast sums annually to European nations, which, 
in this respect, had been so long dependent on, and com- 
pelled to submit to the exactions of, their Oriental neigh- 
bors. Justinian, however, took the infant manufacture 
into his own hands, made it an imperial monopoly, and 
raised the prices of silk higher than those which he had 
formerly prohibited as excessive, so that an ounce of the 
fabric could not be obtained under the price of six pieces 
of gold. Thus the emperor proved any thing but a free- 
trader when he had obtained the secret. However, the 
rearing and manufacture did not long remain merely an 
imperial prerogative, but were extended to Greece, and 
particularly in the Peloponnesus. The Venetians opened 
commercial relations with the Greek Empire, and con- 
tinued for many centuries the channel for supplying the 
western parts of Europe with silks, which were now high- 
ly prized ; for in the year 790 the Emperor Charlemagne 
sent two silken vests to Offa, King of Mercia. The Ro- 
man territories continued to supply most parts of Eu- 
rope until Roger I., King of Sicily, upon his invasion of 
the territories of the Greek Empire, led into captivity a 
considerable number of silk-weavers, whom he compul- 
sorily settled in Palermo, obliging them to teach his sub- 
jects their art ; and in twenty years the silks of Sicily 
had become famous. 

The knowledge of the several processes spread over 
Italy, and was carried into Spain, but it was not until the 
reign of Francis I. that the silk manufacture took root in 
France ; and at this date, even our magnificent Henry 
yni, could only obtain a pair of silk stockings for gala* 



SILK-THROWING ESTABLISHED IN ENGLAND. 321 

days from Spain. His daughter Elizabeth was presented 
by her silk-woman with a pair of English-knit black silk 
stockings ; but the manufacture in England did not make 
much progress in her reign until 1585, when many of the 
silk manufacturers of Antwerp fled to England from the 
persecutions of the Duke of Parma, then governor of the 
Spanish Netherlands. Near the close of his reign, Eliz- 
abeth's successor, James I., encouraged a London mer- 
chant to bring from the Continent of Europe some silk 
throwsters, silk dyers, and broad weavers ; and a begin- 
ning was made in the manufacture of raw silk into broad 
silk fabrics, which increased so rapidly that, in 1629, the 
Silk Throwsters of London were incorporated, and the 
trade had its dye, called "London black." Li 1661, the 
Company of Silk Throwsters in London employed above 
40,000 men, women, and children. The revocation of 
the Edict of Nantes in 1685 compelled Protestant mer- 
chants, manufacturers, and artificers to emigrate from 
France in great numbers, when about 70,000 reached En- 
gland and L^eland, and there established such seats of 
manufacture as that of Spitalfields, in silk of the highest 
styles of art and ingenuity of fabric then known. In 
1713, the petition of the Weavers' Company to Parlia- 
ment at the peace of Utrecht against the commercial 
treaty with France represents the silk manufacture as 
twenty times greater in amount than it had been in 1664, 
and that it had caused a great exportation of woolen and 
other manufactured goods to Turkey and Italy, whence 
the raw silk was imported. 

Up to the year 1718, however, the whole of the silk 
used in England, for whatever purpose, was imported 
"thrown," ^. 6., formed into threads of various kinds and 
twists. In 1702 a Mr. Crotchet had attempted to estab- 
lish the silk-throwing trade in a small mill which he built 
at Derby, but, from defects in his machinery and other 
difficulties, he was soon compelled to abandon his proj- 
ect. In 1715, John Lombe, whose name Avill always be 
remembered with veneration in connection with the Silk 
Trade, resolved upon visiting Italy, and acquiring, at any 
risk and any cost, a knowledge of the process adopted 
in that country, and of introducing it to England. Hav- 
ing well matured his plan, he started on his enterprise. 

O 2 



322 lombe's silk-mill at derby. 

On reaching Italy, he found difficulties greater than he 
had anticipated; for the jealousy of the Italians guarded 
their secret with the most watchful care. At Piedmont, 
finding that an examination of the silk machinery and 
processes was |pBte^^ prohibited, and failing to gain 
open admission ^ fm w^orks, he bribed some of the 
work-people, anwby their connivance, in the disguise of 
a common workman, he made several secret visits to the 
mills, and at each time c^'efully noted down every thing 
he saw, and made sketcBf s of parts of the machinery, so 
as to perfect himself in the operation of throwing. His 
plot was before long discovered, and he was obhged to 
fly with the utmost precipitancy, bringing with him, 
however, his notes, sketches, and portions of the ma- 
chinery, and, better still, a mind which had grasped and 
comprehended the w^hole process. He fled to avoid 
assassination, and took refuge on board ship, and return- 
ed to England with a full knowledge of the trade he had 
run such imminent risk to acquire. 

Lombe was accompanied in his flight by two Italian 
workmen, whom he had bribed, and who risked their 
lives in his scheme. On arriving in England, he at once 
fixed on Derby as the scene of his operations, and in 
1717 arranged with the Corporation for an island on the 
River Derwent, at the yearly rent of £8. On this island 
Lombe erected, at a cost of £30,000, the mill, yet stand- 
ing, called "the Old Silk Mill." The ground being 
swampy, Lombe, before he began to build his mill, 
caused immense piles of oak, tw^enty feet in length, to 
be driven close together by means of an engine which he 
contrived for the purpose, and on these piles was laid a 
stone foundation, on w^hich were turned the stone arches 
that support the walls. 

During the four years occupied in the erection of the 
mill, Lombe, in order to save time and to raise money to 
carry on the works, hired rooms in various parts of Der- 
by, and arranged with the corporation to use the town- 
hall, where he set up machines, which were for the time 
worked by hand. These engines more than fulfilled his 
expectations, and he was enabled to sell thrown silk at 
much lower prices than it could be obtained for from the 
Italians. By the time his large mill was completed and 



SIR THOMAS LOMBE. 323 

liis machinery in active operation, he had permanently 
estabUshed the silk-throwing trade. In 1718 he obtained 
a patent for the sole and exclusive property in the mill 
for fourteen years, and, v^dth the aid of his Italian work- 
men, carried on his new manufacture with great success. 

John Lombe did not, however, long enjoy this pros- -^ 
perity; for soon afterward he died, at the early age of 
twenty-nine, from the effects of poison administered to 
him by the Italians through whom he had learned the 
art. William Hutton, the venerable historian, and a 
native of Derby, whose early days were spent toiling 
wearily in this very mill, says quaintly, among other in- 
teresting references : 

But, alas ! he had not pursued this lucrative commerce more than 
three or four years, when the Italians, who felt the effect of the theft / 
from their want of trade, determined his destruction, and hoped that 
of his works would follow. An artful woman came over in the char- 
acter of a friend, associated with the parties, and assisted in the busi- 
ness ; she attempted to gain both the Italians, and succeeded with one. 
By these a slow poison was supposed, and perhaps justly, to have been 
administered to John Lombe, who lingered two or three years in 
agony. The Italian fled to his own country, and the woman was in- 
terrogated, but nothing transpired except what strengthened suspicion. 
Grand funerals were the fashion ; and perhaps the most superb in- 
humation known in Derby was that of John Lombe. He was a man 
of quiet deportment, who had brought a beneficial manufactory into 
the place, employed the poor, and at advanced wages, and thus could 
not fail to meet with respect ; and his melancholy end excited much 
sympathy. 

Lombe was buried in All Saints' Church, Derby. Dy- 
ing a bachelor, his property fell into the hands of his 
brother, William Lombe, who shortly afterward, being 
of a melancholy temperament, shot himself About 1726 
the mills passed to his cousin. Sir Thomas Lombe. In 
1732 the patent expired, when Sir Thomas petitioned 
Parliament for a renewal, and pleaded " that the works 
had taken so long a time in perfecting, and the people in 
teaching, that there had been none to acquire emolu- 
ment from the patent." " But he forgot," says Hutton, 
"to inform them that he had accumulated more than 
£120,000!" The government declined to renew the 
patent, but granted the sum of £14,000 to Sir Thomas 
as compensation, on condition that he w^ould prepare, 
and deposit in the Tower of London, an exact and faith- 



324 CULTURE OF SILK IN ENGLAND. 

ful model of his machinery, for the inspection and advant- 
age of others who might purpose constructing and 
carrying on similar works. 

The act authorizing the issue of the money mentions, 
among other causes which justified the grant, the great 
obstruction offered to Sir Thomas Lombe's undertaking 
by the King of Sardinia, in prohibiting the exportation 
of raw silk Avhich the engines were intended to work. 

The account of the machinery of this immense mill, 
five stories in height, and one eighth of a mile in length, 
has been much exaggerated. The grand machine is 
stated to have been constructed with 26,586 wheels and 
96,746 movements, which worked 73,726 yards of organ- 
zine silk thread with every revolution of the water-wheel 
whereby the machinery w^as driven ; and as this revolved 
three times in each minute, the almost inconceivable 
quantity of 318,504,960 yards of organzine could be pro- 
duced daily ! Button's authority is, however, to be pre- 
ferred, for he served an apprenticeship of seven years in 
the mill, and he reduces the number of wheels to 13,384. 

Soon after Lombe's patent had expired a mill was 
erected at Stockport, and this was followed by others in 
Derby and in various places, until now there are about 
400 silk-throwing factories in England, employing, it is 
computed, considerably more than 100,000 operatives. 

The chest in which John Lombe brought over to En- 
gland his spindles, and various matters connected with 
.the trade, we here engrave. It is one of the most richly 
carved and painted chests of its kind Avhich is extant. 
Since Lombe's time, it has, until within the last few years, 
been preserved in the mill which he built, but is now the 
property of Mr. Llewellynn Jewitt, F.S.A., of Derby. 
The chest is, of course, much older than Lombe's time, 
and, apart from its association with his name and career, 
is a remarkably fine example of art. The mill is pic- 
turesquely situated on the Derwent : since Lombe's time 
it has received many additions ; but the old mill, as built 
by him, still remains, and is likely to last through many 
generations. The accompanying view has been sketched 
from St. Michael's Mill. 

Various attempts have been made to rear silk-worms in England. 
James I., to obtain the requisite food for the eilk-wonns, in 1608 ient 




LoMBE's Silk JUll, Derby, 




TuR CiiKBT IN wiiioii John Lomue imouoiiT from Piedmont the fiest 
Silk Machinery into England. 



CULTURE OF SILK IN ENGLAND. 327 

circular letters to all the counties of England, strongly recommending 
the inhabitants to plant mulberry-trees; and he directed to be dis-^ 
tributed 10,000 mulberry-plants, which were to be procured in Lon- 
don at three farthings per plant. In 1609 James expended £935 in 
the planting of mulberry-trees upon the site of the present Bucking- 
ham Palace and Gardens, St. James's Park. It was at this time that 
Shakspeare planted his mulberry-tree. King James's garden did not 
succeed; but Charles I., by letters-patent, in the fourth year of his 
reign, granted to Walter Lord Aston the custody and keeping of the 
garden, and of the mulberries and silk-worms there, and of all the 
houses and buildings to the same garden belonging, for his own and 
his son's life. In the next two reigns *'the Mulberry Garden" be- 
came a place of public refreshment : it is a favorite locality in the 
gay comedies of Charles the Second's time. The Silk-Garden scheme 
was revived in 1718, when part of the estate of Sir Thomas More 
(Chelsea Park) was leased to a company, and 2000 mulberry-trees 
Avere planted. Thoresby, in his Diary, 1723, tells us that he saw **a 
sample of the satin lately made at Chelsea of English silk-worms for 
the Princess of Wales, which was very rich and beautiful." This 
scheme also failed ; but the Clock-house in Lower Chelsea was long 
after famous for the sale of mulberries from the trees planted for silk- 
rearing. 

In 1790 the Society of Arts awarded a premium for silk grown in 
the neighborhood of London. No similar success is recorded until 
1839, when Mr. Felkin produced at Nottingham some fine cocoons 
from eggs from Italy. Mrs. Whitby, at Newlands, near Lymington, 
Hants, has plantations of mulberry-trees, and has for many years 
reared silk with success from eggs of the large Italian sort, of four 
changes, from which she obtains as great a proportion and as good a 
quality of silk as they do in Italy or France. Mrs. Whitby has pre- 
sented to the queen twenty yards of rich and brilliant damask manu- 
factured from silk raised at Newlands. The obtaining a sufficient 
quantity of food for the worms at the right time had hitherto been the 
great difficulty of growing silk in England. This has been surmount- 
ed by Mrs. Whitby, whose silk is worth as much in the market as the 
best foreign silks ; and, making allowance for unfavorable seasons, 
labor, machinery, outlay of money, etc., Mrs. Whitby states that land 
laid out for the silk-worm's food will afford a large profit. Some of 
the silk grown by her has been pronounced superior to the best Ital- 
ian raw silk. 

In 1846 scarfs were manufactured in Spitalfields from the produce 
of between 700 and 800 worms kept in an attic room in Truro. In 
size and weight the worms surpassed those in Italy ; the cocoons were 
larger ; the quality of silk, when reeled, was fully equal to the best 
imported, and the quantity exceeded the Italian average, and this in 
a season not remarkably propitious. 

The home culture of silk is an important object, since the value of 
silk brought to England is above £2,000,000 annually; and the silk 
manufacture engages perhaps fifty millions of our capital, and em- 
ploys one million of our population. 



WILLIAM LEE AND THE STOCKING- 
FEAME. 

Knit Silk Stockings made in England were first worn 
by Queen Elizabeth, who refused to w^ear any cloth hos»^ 
afterward. An apprentice, soon after, borrowed a pair 
of knit worsted stockings, made at Mantua, and then 
made a pair like them, which he presented to the Earl 
of Pembroke ; and these are the first worsted stockings 
known to be knit in England. This humble process of 
knitting seems to have been superseded by the stocking- 
frame almost immediately after the introduction of knit 
stockings ; for the invention of the stocking-frame dates 
from 1589, the thirty-first year of Elizabeth's reign. 

A singular confusion pervades the early history of the 
stocking-frame; there is a strange jumble of persons, 
places, and dates in the accounts given of the inven- 
tion and the inventor, which it is difficult to reconcile, 
unless w^e implicitly believe the evidence of a painting 
which long hung in Stocking- Weavers' Hall, in Redcross 
Street, London. This picture contained the portrait of 
a man in collegiate costume, in the act of pointing to an 
iron stocking-frame, and addressing a woman Avho is 
knitting with needles by hand. The picture bore the 
following inscription: "In the year 1589, the ingenious 
William Lee, A.M., of St. John's College, Cambridge, 
devised this profitable art for stockings "(but, being de- 
spised, went to France), yet of iron tohimself, but to us 
and to others of gold : in memory of whom this is here 
painted." 

From Deering's Account of JSFottingham^ it appears 
that William Lee (whose name is sometimes w^ritten 
Lea) was a native of Woodborough, a village about sev- 
en miles from Nottingham. He was heir to a consider- 
able freehold estate, and a graduate of St. John's Col- 
lege, Cambridge. It is reported that, being enamored 
of a young country-girl, who, during his visits, paid more 
attention to her work, which was knitting, than to her 



lee's STOCKIXG-FRAME. 329 

lover and his proposals, he endeavored to find out a ma- 
chine which might facilitate and forward the operation 
of knitting, and by this means afford more leisure to the 
object of his affection to converse with him. Beckmann 
says, " Love indeed is fertile in inventions, and gave rise, 
it is said, to the art of painting ; but a machine so com- 
plex in its parts and so wonderful in its effects would 
seem to require longer and greater reflection, more judg- 
ment, and more time and patience than could be expect- 
ed in a lover. But, even if the case should appear prob- 
lematical, there can be no doubt in regard to the invent- 
or, whom most of the English writers positively assert 
to have been William Lee." Deering expressly states 
that Lee made the first loom in the year 1589, the date 
named on the painting. 

Another version of the story states that Lee was ex- 
pelled from the University for marrying contrary to the 
statutes. Having no fortune, the wife was obliged to 
contribute to their joint support by knitting ; and Lee, 
while watching the motion of his while's fingers, conceived 
the idea of imitating those movements by a machine. 
According to another version, Lee, w^hile yet unmarried, 
excited the contempt of his mistress by contriving a ma- 
chine to imitate the primitive process of knitting, and 
was rejected by her. But both accounts agree that the 
Stocking-frame was invented by Lee, and that about the 
date assigned. A writer in the Qitarterly lleview^ 1816, 
however, observes, " This painting might give rise to the 
story of Lee's having invented the machine to facilitate 
the labor of knitting, in consequence of falling in love 
with a young country-girl, who, during his visits, was 
more attentive to her knitting than his proposals ; or the 
story may, perhaps, have suggested the picture." 

But there is another claimant. Aaron Hill ascribes 
the invention to a young Oxonian^ who, having con- 
tracted an imprudent marriage, and having nothing to 
support his family but the produce of his wife's knitting, 
invented the stocking-frame, and thereby accumulated a 
large fortune. Evelyn, in his Diary ^ records having seen 
this machine as follows: "3 May, 1661. I went to see 
the wonderful engine for weaving silk stockings, said to 
have been the invention of an Oxford scholar forty years 



330 

since ;" thus placing the invention many years later than 
the date of the picture in Stocking- Weavers' Hall. 

The story of Lee's after-life, however, corroborates his 
being the inventor; his name is mentioned as such in 
the petition of the Stocking-Weavers of London to allow 
them to establish a guild. It is related that Lee, having 
taught the use of the machine to his brother and the rest 
of his relations, established himself at Culverton, near 
Nottingham, as a stocking-weaver. After remaining 
there five years, he applied to Queen JElizabeth for coun- 
tenance and support ; but, finding himself neglected both 
by the queen and her successor, James I., he transferred 
himself and his machines to France, where Henri IV. 
and his sagacious minister Sully gave the inventor a 
welcome reception. Lee is said to have carried over 
nine journeymen and several looms to Rouen, in Nor- 
mandy. Nevertheless, after the assassination of Henri, 
Lee shared in the persecutions sufiered by the Protest- 
ants, and is said to have died in great distress, of grief 
and disappointment, in Paris. Some of his workmen 
made their escape to England, and, under one Aston, 
who had been Lee's apprentice, established the stocking- 
manufacture permanently in England. Of Aston we find 
the following account in Thornton's Nottingha'insMre^ 
1677, foL, p. 297: 

At Culverton was bom William Lee, Master of Arts in Cambridge, 
and heir to a pretty freehold here ; who, seeing a woman knit, in- 
vented a loom to knit, and which he or his brother James performed 
and exercised before Queen Elizabeth ; and leaving it to . . . . Aston, 
his apprentice, went beyond the seas, and was thereby esteemed the 
author of that ingenious engine wherewith they now weave silk and 
other stockings. This .... Aston added something to his master's 
invention ; he was some time a miller at Thoroton, nigh which place 
he was bom. 

Lee's invention was important, as it not only enabled 
our ancestors to discard their former inelegant hose, but 
it likewise caused the English manufactures to excel all 
of foreign production, and to be sought for accordingly. 
Our makers soon exported vast quantities of silk stock- 
ings to Italy: these maintained their superiority for so 
long a period, that Keyslar, in his Travels through Europe 
as late as the year 1730, remarks, "At Naples, when a 
tradesman Avould highly recommend his silk stockings. 



PICTURE IN stocking-weavers' HALL. 331 

he protests they are right English." In 1663 Charles II. 
granted to the Framework-Knitters' Society of London a 
charter, which Oliver Cromwell had refused them. 

The painting of Lee and his wife, however, was parted 
with by the Company at a period of pecuniary embar- 
rassment. Mr. Bennet Woodcroft has collected some 
particulars of the disposal of the picture, in the hope that 
they may lead to its restoration. In a list, dated 1687, 
of plate, paintings, etc., belonging to the Company, is an 
item — " Mr. Lee's picture, by Balderston :" it is also de- 
scribed in Hatton's London^ 1708. From 1732, the Com- 
pany's books show no more meetings at their Hall, or 
any farther entry of the picture. The Company subse- 
quently let their Hall, and met at various taverns. The 
head of the Court Summons, dated 1777, is engraved 
from Lee's picture; and from this plate is copied an en- 
graving in the Gallery of Portraits of Inventors in the 
Great Seal Patent Office. The picture is thought to 
have passed, about 1773, into the hands of an influential 
member of the Court of Framework Knitters, who from 
time to time lent the Company money, as their books 
testify. The Hall in Redcross Street has long been taken 
down. 



JACQUAED AND HIS LOOM. 

The several looms employed in weaving appear to 
have been alike eclipsed by the exquisite apparatus of 
M. Jacquard, which is very properly named after the in- 
ventor. Like too many other inventors, he was treated 
with coldness and ingratitude by the conununity which 
he has so largely benefited. 

Joseph-Marie Jacquard was born at Lyons in 1752, of 
humble parents, both of whom were weavers. He is 
said to have been left even to teach himself to read and 
write ; but at a very early period he displayed a taste 
for mechanics by constructing neat models of buildings, 
furniture, etc. 'At the age of twelve his father placed 
him with a book-binder ; he was subsequently engaged 
in type-founding and the manufacture of cutlery, in both 
which occupations he gave evidence of skill. Upon the 
death of his father, young Jacquard, with the small prop- 
erty left him, attempted to establish a business in weav- 
ing figured fabrics, but failed, and he was compelled to 
sell his looms to pay his debts. He subsequently mar- 
ried, and, disappointed of a portion with his wife, he was 
forced to sell his paternal residence. After occupying 
himself with ingenious schemes for improvements in weav- 
ing, cutlery, and type-founding, which produced nothing 
for the support of his family, Jacquard was driven into 
the service of a lime-burner at Bresse, while his wife had 
a small straw-hat business at Lyons, whither, in 1793, 
Jacquard returned, and assisted in the defense of that 
place against the army of- the Convention, his only son, 
then a youth of fifteen, fighting by his side. They were 
compelled to fly, and, joining the army of the Rhine, his 
son was killed in battle, and Jacquard returned to Lyons, 
where he assisted his wife in her business of straw-hat 
making. Lyons at length began to rise from its ruins, 
and its artisans returned from Switzerland, Germany, and 
England, where they had taken refuge. Jacquard now 



jacquakd's loom. 333 

applied himself with renewed energy to the completion 
of a machine for figure-weaving, of which he had con- 
ceived the idea as early as 1790. He succeeded, though 
imperfectly; and in 1801 he received from the National 
Exposition a bronze medal for his invention, w^hich he 
patented. He set up a loom on this new principle, which 
was visited by Carnot, the celebrated mathematician. 

About this time Jacquard's attention was directed by 
an English newspaper to a rew^ard offered by a society 
for the invention of a machine for weaving nets for fish- 
ing and maritime purposes. Jacquard made the appa- 
ratus, but threw it aside ; and his machine-made net fall- 
ing into the hands of the prefect at Lyons, he and his 
machine were placed under arrest and conveyed to Paris, 
where the invention was submitted to inspectors, upon 
whose report a gold medal was awarded to Jacquard in 
February, 1804. He was now introduced to Napoleon 
and Carnot, when the latter, not understanding his mech- 
anism, roughly asked him if he were the man who pre- 
tended to do that impossibility — to tie a knot in a 
stretched string. Jacquard, not disconcerted, explained 
the action of his machinery with simplicity, and con- 
vinced Carnot that the supposed impossibility was accom- 
plished by it. He was then employed to repair and put 
in order the models and machines in the Conservatoire 
des Arts et Metiers, and while there he made some in- 
genious advances in weaving machinery, one of which 
was for producing ribbons with a velvet face on each 
side. He also contrived some improvements upon a 
loom invented by Vaucanson, which improvements have 
been stated to be the origin of the Jacquard machine. 
According to another account, Vaucanson's loom is in no 
way connected with Jacquard's ; and, as its mechanism 
is very complex, its application limited to very small pat- 
terns, its action slow, and its cost very great, it belongs 
rather to the class of curious than of useful machines. 

In 1804 Jacquard returned to Lyons to superintend 
his inventions for figure-weaving and for making nets, 
and in 1806 the municipal administration of Lyons pur-, 
chased the loom for the use of the public. For some 
years, however, Jacquard had to struggle against the 
prejudice of the Lyonnese weavers, who conspired to dis- 



334 JACQUARD S LOOM. 

courage his machinery ; and eventually it was publicly 
broken up and sold as old materials, while the inventor's 
personal safety was at times endangered. At length, un- 
der the effect of foreign competition, the value of Jac- 
quard's loom was acknowledged, and it was brought very 
extensively into use, not only in France, but in Switzer- 
land, Germany, Italy, and America, and it has even been 
introduced into the empire of China. 

Jacquard was solicited by the manufacturers of Rouen 
and St. Quentin to organize their factories of cotton and 
batiste, and he received a similar offer from England ; 
but he preferred remaining at Lyons, and continued to 
promote the use of his great invention until he retired to 
the neighboring village of Oudlins, where he died in 1834, 
at the age of eighty-two. During his life he received 
the cross of the Legion of Honor, and in 1840 a public 
statue was raised to his memory at Lyons. 

The introduction of Jacquard's cheap and simple ma- 
chine, coming within the reach of the humble weaver, 
forms a memorable epoch in the textile art. By its 
agency the richest and most complex designs are pro- 
duced with facility at the most moderate price ; and so 
far from diminishing employment, as some feared on its 
first introduction, it is stated to have increased the num- 
ber of workmen in the manufacture in which it is used 
tenfold. Many ingenious applications of the Jacquard 
loom have been made, either to produce novel combma- 
tions or to work with more than usual rapidity. 

Jacquard's invention is not, strictly speaking, a loom, 
but an appendage to the loom, intended to elevate or de- 
press, by bars, the warp-threads for the reception of the 
shuttle; the patterns being produced by means of bands 
of punched cards acting on needles, with loops or eyes, 
which regulate the figure. The apparatus was first ap- 
plied to silk-weaving only, but it has been extended to 
bobbin-net and other fancy manufactures, carpet-w^eav- 
ing, etc. Formerly the most elaborate brocades could 
only be produced by the most skillful weavers and the 
most painful labor ; now, by aid of the Jacquard loom, 
the most beautiful products may be accompUshed by men 
possessing only the ordinary amount of skill, while the 
labor attendant upon the actual weaving is little more 



INGRATITUDE TO JACQUARD. 335 

than that required for making the plainest goods. The 
name of Jacquard has become, so to speak, technical in 
both the Old and New World, and his loom will prove a 
lasting record of his mechanical talent, though it has not 
uniformly secured him the respect of his own countrymen. 
In 1853 a strange instance of ingratitude was added 
to the history of Jacquard and his Loom. Two of the 
inventor's nieces were compelled by poverty to oifer for 
sale the gold medal bestowed by Louis XVIII. on their 
uncle, the sum asked being the intrinsic value of the gold, 
£20. The Chamber of Commerce of Lyons being ac- 
quainted with the circumstance, agreed to purchase the 
medal for £24 ! Such was the gratitude of the manufac- 
turing interest of' Lyons to the memory of a man to 
whom it owes so large a portion of its splendor. 



DE. FEANKLIN PEOVES THE IDENTITY OF 
LIGHTNING AND ELECTEICITY. 

The Abbe NoUet and other investigators had already- 
made some ingenious suggestions respecting the analo- 
gies between Electricity and Lightning, when, in 1762, 
their truth was amply proved by Franklin, who, like his 
predecessors, meditating upon the similarity of their ef- 
fects, traced out farther resemblances, and at length hit 
upon the happy expedient of sending up a common kite 
to an electric cloud, and thus experimentally demonstra- 
ting their identity. The following are the particulars of 
this great discovery : 

Franklin begins his account of the similarity of the Electric Fluid 
and Lightning by cautioning his readers not to be staggered at the 
great difference of effects in point of degree, since from that no fair 
argument could be drawn of the actual disparity of their natures. It 
is, he says, no wonder that the effects of the one should so far exceed 
those of the other ; for if two gun-barrels electrified will strike at two 
inches distance, and make a report, at how great a distance 10,000 
acres of electric cloud must strike and give its fire, and how loud must 
be the crack! He then adds that flashes of lightning are generally 
crooked and waWng, and so is a long electric spark ; that lightning, 
like common electricity, strikes the highest and most pointed objects 
in its way in preference to others, such as hills, trees, towers, spires, 
masts of ships, points of spears, etc. ; that it takes the readiest and 
best conductor ; that it sets fire to inflammable bodies, rends others to 
pieces, and melts the metals. Lightning, he adds, has often been 
known to strike people blind, and the same happened to a pigeon 
which had received a violent shock of electricity ; in other cases it 
killed animals, and they have also been killed by electricity. 

Keasoning on these effects, and having observed that pointed con- 
ductors appear to attract electricit}-, he conceived that pointed rods of 
iron, fixed in the air, might draw from clouds their electric matter 
without noise or danger, and dissipate it at their termination in the 
earth. The following is his memorandum on this subject: ''The 
electric fluid is attracted by points; we do not know whether this 
property be in lightning; but since they agree in all particulars in 
which we can already compare them, it is not improbable that they 
agree likewise in this. Let the experiment be made.^^ 

In the year 1752, while waiting for the erection of a ppire in the 



IDENTITY OF LIGHTNING AND ELECTRICITY. 337 

city of Philadelphia,* not imagining that a pointed rod of any moder- 
ate height would answer the purpose, it occurred to Franklin that by 
means of a common kite he might have ready access to the higher re- 
gions of the atmosphere. Preparing, therefore, a large silk handker- 
chief, and two cross-sticks to extend it on, he took the opportunity of 
the first approaching thunderstorm, and went into a field, where there 
was a shed proper for the purpose ; but, dreading the ridicule which 
he feared might attend an unsuccessful attempt, he communicated his 
intention to no one but his son, who assisted him in flying his kite. 
A considerable time elapsed without any appearance of success, and a 
promising cloud passed over the kite with no effect; when, just as he 
was beginning to despair, he observed some loose threads upon the 
string of the kite begin to diverge and stand erect : on this, he fastened 
a key to the string, and on presenting his knuckle to it was gratified 
by the first electric spark which had thus been drawn from the clouds: 
others succeeded ; and when the string had become wet by the falling 
rain, a copious stream of electric fire passed from the conductor to 
his hand. What were Franklin's emotions upon this interesting occa- 
sion it is not difficult to conceive : we are told that, when he saw the 
fibres of the string diverge and the spark pass, ^'he uttered a deep 
sigh, and wished that the moment were his last;" he felt that his 
name would be immortalized by the discovery. 

Dr. Franklin pursued these experiments with much 
assiduity and success. He erected an insulated rod to 
draw the lightning from the clouds into his house, and 
performed, with the electricity thus derived, nearly all 

* Proud as are the people of Philadelphia of their illustrious towns- 
man, they pay little respect to his remains. These lie within a very 
short distance of Arch Street, in the northeast corner of Christ Church 
grave-yard, at Fifth and Arch Streets. The spot is marked by a large 
marble slab, laid flat on the ground, with nothing carved upon it but 
these words : 

Franklin, it will be recollected, wrote a humorous epitaph for himself : 
but his good taste and good sense showed him how unsuitable to his 
living character it would have been to jest in such a place. After all, 
his literary works, scientific fame, and his undoubted patriotism, form 
his best epitaph. Still, it may be thought, he might have been distin- 
guished in his own land by a more honorable resting-place than the 
obscure corner of an obscure burying-ground, where his bones lie in- 
discriminately along with those of ordinary mortals ; and his tomb, 
already well-nigh hid in the rubbish, may soon be altogether lost. 
We doubt much if one in a hundred of the present generation of 
Philadeli)hia have ever seen Franklin's grave. Thousands pass daily 
within a few feet of the spot where his ashes and those of his wife re- 
pose, without being conscious of the fact, or, if aware of it, they are 
unable to obtain a glimpse of the grave. 

V 



338 DALIBAED AND DELOZ S EXPEKIMEXTS. 

the experiments for which he had before employed the 
common machine ; and, that no opportunity might be 
lost of making such experiments, he attached a chime of 
bells to the etectric rod, which gave him notice by their 
ringing of the electric state of his apparatus. 

It should, however, be stated that two French gentle- 
men, Messrs. Dalibard and Deloz, were probably the first 
who experimentally verified Franklin's hypothesis, al- 
though the doctor was unacquainted with their proceed- 
ings. The former prepared his apparatus at Marly, near 
Paris ; the latter at his house, which stood upon high 
ground in that city. M. Dalibard's apparatus consisted 
of an iron rod forty feet long, the lower end of which 
Avas brought into a sentry-box, where the rain could not 
enter, while on the outside it was fastened to three 
wooden posts by silken strings defended from the rain. 
This machine was the first that happened to be visited 
by the ethereal fire. M. Dalibard himself was from 
home ; but in his absence he had intrusted the care of 
his apparatus to one Coisier, w^ho was directed to call 
some of his neighbors, particularly the curate of the 
parish, whenever there should be any appearance of a 
thunder-storm. At length, on May 10, 1752, between 
two and three in the afternoon, Coisier heard a loud clap 
of thunder ; he innnediately ran to the sentry-box, and, 
in the presence of the curate and several neighbors, drew 
sparks from the conductor. A few days afterward a 
successful repetition of the experiment was made by M. 
Deloz at Paris. 

These important and interesting experiments were re- 
peated in almost every civilized country with varied suc- 
cess. In France a grand result was obtained by M. de 
Romas. He constructed a kite seven feet high and three 
feet wide, which was raised to the height of 550 feet by 
a string with a fine wire interwoven through its whole 
length, to render it a better conductor. On the 26th 
of August, 1756, sparks, or rather streams of fight, were 
darted from the string of this kite of an inch in diameter 
and ten feet long. 

Considering the facility, and, at the same time, the 
danger of these experiments, it is curious that they 
have only in one instance been attended by a fatal result, 



EICHMAN S FATAL EXPERIMENT. 339 

namely, in the case of Professor Richman of St. Peters- 
burg. He had constructed an apparatus for experiments 
on atmospherical electricity which was entirely insula- 
ted, and had no contrivance for discharging it when too 
strongly electrified. On the 6th of August, 1753, he was 
exhibiting the electricity of his apparatus in company 
with a friend ; while attending to an experiment, his 
head accidentally approached the insulated rod, and a 
flash of lightning immediately passed from it through 
his body, and deprived him of life. A red spot was pro- 
duced upon his forehead, his shoe was burst open, and a 
part of his Avaistcoat singed ; his companion was for 
some time rendered senseless ; the door of the room was 
split and torn off its hinges. 

Franklin's discovery of the identity of lightning and 
electricity has not been without its important practical 
results, among which is the application of conductors to 
buildings and ships, by which their safety during a thun- 
der-storm is almost insured. The discovery has been 
most extensively applied by Sir William Snow Harris in 
his lightning-rods, which, by insuring the security of 
ships and buildings, have saved many lives and much 
valuable property. 



CHEMISTRY OF THE GASES : DISCOVERY 
OF CHOKE-DAMP AND FIRE-DAMP. 

In the time of Van Helmont, early in the seventeenth 
century, the workmen in certain German mines were mo- 
lested, just as our colliers still are, by poisonous choke- 
damp and explosive fire-damp; that is to say (for the 
words were German, though only too easily domesticated 
in England), by suffocating and by fiery vapors, the for- 
mer of which put out life silently but summarily, while 
the latter might blow its unfortunate victims to pieces. 
In sarcastic playfulness with the popular superstition as 
to these guardians of the mineral treasures of the old 
earth. Van Helmont imposed upon them the name of 
Ghosts or Gases ; but he knew little or nothing positive- 
ly about them. Boyle was probably the first to suspect 
that some solid bodies do in certain circumstances — ;when 
they are heated, for instance — throw off artificial airs, 
resembling the common atmospheric gases in thinness 
and in elasticity, as well as in dryness and permanency, 
but differing from them he could not tell how. 

It was young Black, the greatest chemist Scotland has 
produced, and the discoverer of that fact of latent heat 
which Watt has embodied in the steam-engine, who took 
the first positively chemical step in the progress. He 
discovered that limestone (or chalk, or marble, or oyster- 
shell), when burned in the kiln, and thereby rendered 
quick, parts with a kind of air in which no animal can 
breathe or live ; and also that it is owing to its setting 
free this air or gas that the change from inactive lime- 
stone to caustic quicklime is due. He called it fixed air, 
imprisoned in the rock till the furnace, or oil of vitriol, 
or the spirit of salt, extricated it from its fixture. He 
perceived and proved that this fixed air was neither 
more nor less than of the nature of an acid, but existing, 
alone of all acids, in the airy or gaseous state ; and it 
was then conceived that there may exist many different 



CHOKE-DAMP AND FIRE-DAMP. 341 

kinds of airy matter, just as there are many kinds of 
solid and liquid substances. 

This magnificent discovery was made at Edinburg al- 
most within the memory of its present inhabitants, and 
it is the greatest discovery in natural science that has 
ever been made there. Dr. Chalmers said of this chem- 
istry of the gases, '' Think of Black catching fixed air, 
and discerning it to be an acid, at a time when nobody 
thouglit of such things ; that was the great stroke ; it 
was a very great thing to do." 

Soon after this initiative had been taken by Joseph 
Black, Priestley invented an easy way of collecting and 
handling gaseous bodies (the pneumatic trough, with its 
jars), and actually came upon some nine kinds of gas (all 
differing from ordinary air, and one from another) in a 
few years. Scheele had, meanwhile, been making con- 
quests of the same sort in an obscure Swedish town, with 
no apparatus but phials and bladders, and had added two 
or three more to the list of new gases. All Europe fol- 
lowed these sagacious leaders — Cavendish, the discover- 
er of hydrogen ; Watt, who first suggested that water is 
composed of two gases ; Rutherford, the discoverer of 
nitrogen ; Lavoisier, the interpreter, though not the first 
discoverer of oxygen, and the rest — until every body has 
at length become aware that gases are just the steams of 
liquids which boil at immensely low points of temper- 
ature, these liquids being the liquefactions of solid bodies 
which melt at temperatures lower still ; and that, there- 
fore, there may be no end to the number of the kinds of 
gaseous matter, precisely as there is no known limit to 
the vast variety of liquids and solids. — North British 
Review^ No. 35. 

Of Joseph Black it has been said he lived as fine a life 
of science as was ever lived, and died with a cup of milk 
un spilled in his hand. 

The gas called by miners Fire-damp, or simply damp^ is only met 
with in mining certain kinds of coal. It is especially abundant in 
the Newcastle coal-field. Elsewhere what is called Choke-damp pre- 
vails, this being carbonic acid gas ; and it is not unlikely that other 
gases are mixed from time to time with these. When it is remem- 
bered that a large number of men, and often many horses, are em- 
ployed underground, and that frequently there are miles of under- 
ground passages, and hundreds of miners, without more than two or 



342 CHOKE-DAMP AND FIRE-DAMP. 

three shafts communicating with the upper air, and these only chim- 
neys many hundred feet long, and of small area, no one will be sur- 
prised that the air becomes vitiated, and that a small addition of foul 
gas renders it unfit for the support of life. When, however, gas of 
whatever kind comes off regularly, the mechanical means of ventila- 
tion commonly adopted are sufiicient. It is only when there are sud- 
den, unexpected, large jets of gas instantaneously poured forth, and. 
when this gas, mixed with common air, becomes highly explosive, 
that the real danger arises. 



SIR HUMPHREY DAVY AND THE SAFETY- 
LAMP. 

The origin of this great " invention for the preservation 
of human life" greatly partakes of that interest which is 
always concentrated on the struggle of life. Its princi- 
ple was doubtless ex23erimented on by Davy when a 
young man at Penzance, and writing his JEssays on Heat 
and Lights even before he had commenced the study of 
chemistry. It is true that he shone early in the eye of 
the world, and was by nature much more than equal to 
the kind of researches he undertook; yet his great 
achievement of the Safety-lamp was the result of many 
years' patient and enlightened research, and may be 
traced from the commencement of his career of original 
research in the most remote town of Cornwall, to his 
construction of the Lamp itself in the theatre of the Roy- 
al Institution in London ; where, in like manner, he de- 
veloped heat by rubbing two pieces of ice together^ which 
he had many years before rehearsed with Tom Harvey, 
one winter's day, beside Larigan River. 

The boyhood of Davy has been sketched in some of 
the most fascinating pieces of biography ever written f' 
the annals of science do not present us with any record 
that equals the school-days and self-education of the boy 
Humphrey in popular interest ; and, unlike many bright 
mornings, this commencement in a few years led to a 
brilliant meridian, and by a succession of discoveries, ac- 
complished more, in relation to change of theory and ex- 
tension of science, than in the most ardent and ambitious 
moments of youth he could either hope to effect or im- 
agine possible. 

Humphrey Davy was born at Penzance in 1778 ; was 
a healthy, strong, and active child, and could speak flu- 
ently before he was two years old ; copied engravings 

* Among these interesting records, entitled to foremost mention is 
the eloquent article in No. 8 of the North British Revieiv, on Dr. 
Daly's edition of the works of his illustrious brotlier. 



.'^44 DAVY AT THE ROYAL IXSTITUTIOX. 

before he learned to write, and could recite part of the 
PilgrMs Progress before he could well read it. At the 
age of five years he could gain a good account of the 
contents of a book while turning over the leaves ; and 
he retained this remarkable faculty through life. He 
excelled in telling stories to his playmates ; loved fishing, 
and collecting and painting birds and fishes ; he had his 
own little garden, and recorded his impressions of ro- 
mantic scenery in verse of no ordinary merit. To his 
self-education, however, he owed almost every thing. He 
studied with intensity mathematics, and metaphysics, and 
physiology; before he was nineteen he began to study 
chemistry, and in four months proposed a new hypothe- 
sis on heat and light, to which he won over the expe- 
rienced Dr. Beddoes. With his associate Gregory Watt 
(son of the celebrated James Watt), he collected speci- 
mens of rocks and minerals. He made considerable prog- 
ress in medicine ; he experimented zealously, especially 
on the effects of the gases in respiration : at the age of 
twenty-one he had breathed nitrous oxide, and nearly 
lost his life from breathing carbureted hydrogen. Next 
year he commenced the galvanic experiments which led 
to some of his greatest discoveries. In 1802 he began 
his brilliant scientific career at the Royal Institution, 
where he remained till 1812; here he constructed his 
great voltaic battery of 2000 double plates of copper and 
zinc, and commenced the mineralogical collection now in 
the Museum. His lectures were often attended by 1000 
persons : his youth, his simplicity, his natural eloquence, 
his chemical knowledge, his happy illustrations and well- 
conducted experiments, and the auspicious state of sci- 
ence, insured Davy great and instant success. 

The enthusiastic admiration with which he was hailed 
can hardly be imagined now. Not only riien of the 
highest rank — men of science, men of letters, and men of 
• trade — ^but women of fashion and blue-stockings, old and 
young, pressed into the theatre of the institution to cover 
him with applause. His greatest labors were his dis- 
covery of the decomposition of the fixed alkalies, and 
the re-establishment of the simple nature of chlorine : 
his other researches were tlie investigation of astringent 
vegetables in connection with the art of tanning ; the 



THE SAFETY-LAMP. 345 

analysis of rocks and minerals in connection with ge- 
ology ; the comprehensive subject of agricultural chem- 
istry; and galvanism and electro-chemical science. He 
was also an early but unsuccessful experimenter in the 
photographic art. 

Of the lazy conservative spirit and ludicrous indolence 
in science which at this time attempted to hoodwink the 
public, a quaint instance is recorded of a worthy profess- 
or of chemistry at Aberdeen. He had allowed some 
years to pass over Davy's brilliant discovery of potassium 
and its congeneric metals without a word about them in 
his lectures. At length the learned doctor was concussed 
by his colleagues on the subject, and he condescended to 
notice it. "Both potash and soda are now said to be 
metallic oxydes," said he ; " the oxydes, in fact, of two 
metals, called potassium and sodium by the discoverer of 
them, one Davy, in London, a verra troublesome person 
in chemistry."* 

Turn we, however, to the brightest event in our chem- 
ical philosopher's career. By his unrivaled series of 
practical discoveries, Davy acquired such a reputation 
for success among his countrymen that his aid was in- 
voked on every great occasion. The properties of fire- 
damp, or carbureted hydrogen in coal mines, had already 
been ascertained by Dr. Henry. When this gas is min- 
gled in certain proportions with atmospheric air, it forms 
a mixture which kindles upon the contact of a lighted 
candle, and often explodes with tremendous violence, 
killing the men and horses, and projecting much of the 
contents of the mine through the shafts or apertures like 
an enormous piece of artillery. Soon after, a detonation 
of fire-damp occurred within a coal mine in the north of 
England, so dreadful that it destroyed more than a hund- 
red miners. A committee of the proprietors besought 
our chemist to provide a method of preparing for such 
tremendous visitations, and he did it. He tells us that 
he first turned his attention particularly to the subject in 
1815 ; but he must have been prepared for it by the re- 
searches of his early years. Still, there appeared little 
hope of finding an eflScacious remedy. The resources of 
modern mechanical science had been fully applied in 

* North British Review^ No. 25. 
P2 



346 davy's model safety-lamp. 

ventilation. The comparative lightness of fire-damp was 
well miderstood ; every precaution was taken to pre- 
serve the communications open ; and the currents of 
air were promoted or occasioned, not only by furnaces, 
but likewise by air-pumps and steam apparatus. We 
may here mention that, for giving light to the coal-miner 
or pitman, where the fire-damp was apprehended, the 
primitive contrivance was a steel-mill, the light of which 
was produced by contact of a flint with the edge of a 
wheel kept in rapid motion. A "safety-lamp" had al- 
ready, in 1813, been constructed by Dr. Clanny, the prin- 
ciple of which was forcing in air through water by bel- 
lows ; but the machine was ponderous and complicated, 
and required a boy to work it. M. Humboldt had pre- 
viously, in 1796, executed a lamp for mines upon the 
same principle as that of Dr. Clanny. 

Davy, having conceived that flame and explosion may 
be regulated and arrested, began a minute chemical ex- 
amination of fire-damp. He found that carbureted hy- 
drogen gas, even when mixed w^ith fourteen times its 
bulk of atmospheric air, was still explosive. He ascer- 
tained that explosions of inflammable gases were in- 
capable of being passed through long narrow metallic 
tubes, and that this principle of security was still obtain- 
ed by diminishing their length and diameter at the same 
time, and likewise diminishing their length and increas- 
ing their number, so that a great number of small aper- 
tures would not pass explosion when their depth was 
equal to their diameter. This fact led to trials upon 
sieves of w^ire-gauze ; he found that if a piece of wire- 
gauze was held over the flame of a lamp, or coal-gas, it 
prevented the flame from passing; and he ascertained 
that a flame confined in a cylinder of very fine wire- 
gauze did not explode even in a mixture of oxygen and 
hydrogen, but that the gases burnt in it with great 
vivacity. 

These experiments served as the basis of the Safety- 
lamp. The apertures in the gauze, Davy tells us, in his 
work on the subject, should not be more than l-22d of 
an inch square. The lamp is screwed on to the bottom 
of the wire-gauze cylinder, and fitted by a tight ring. 
When it is lighted, and gradually introduced into an 



Davy's model safety-lamp. 847 

atmosphere mixed with fire-damjD, the size and length of 
the flame are first increased. When the inflammable 
gas forms as much as l-12tli of the volume of air, the 
cylinder becomes filled with a feeble blue flame, within 
Avhicli the flanie of the wick burns brightly; its light 
continues till the fire-damp increases to l-6th or l-5th, 
when it is lost in the flame of the fire-damp, which now 
fills the cylinder with a pretty strong light ; but when 
the foul air constitutes l-3d of the atmosphere, it is no 
longer fit for respiration, and this ought to be a signal to 
the miner to leave that part of the workings. 

Sir Humphrey Davy presented his first communication 
respecting his discovery of the Safety-lamp to the Royal 
Society in 1815. This was followed by a series of pa- 
pers, crowned by that read on the 11th of January, 1816, 
when the principle of the Safety-lamp was announced, 
and Sir Humphrey presented to the Society a model 
made by his own hands, Avhich is to this day preserved 
in the collection of the Royal Society at Burlington 
House. From this interesting memorial the accompany- 
ing vignette has been sketched. 




Model of the Safety-lamp, made by Sir Humphrey Davy's own hands; in the 
possession of the Royal Society. 

There have been several modifications of the Safety- 
lamp, and the merit of the discovery has been claimed 
by others, among whom was Mr. George Stephenson; 
but the question was set at rest in 1817 by an examina- 



348 EFFECTS OF THE SAFETY-LAMP. 

tion, attested by Sir Joseph Banks, P.R.S., Mr. Brande, 
Mr. Hatchett, and Dr. WoUaston, and awarding the in- 
dependent merit to Davy. 

It should be explained that Stephenson's lamp was 
formed on the principle of admitting the fire-damp by 
narrow tubes, and " in such small detached portions that 
it w^ould be consumed by combustion." The tw^o lamps 
were doubtless distinct inventions ; though Davy, in all 
justice, appears to be entitled to precedence, not only in 
point of date, but as regards the long chain of inductive 
reasoning concerning the nature of flame by which his 
result w^as arrived at. 

Meanwhile, the report by the Parliamentary Commit- 
tee " can not admit that the experiments (made with the 
lamp) have any tendency to detract from the character 
of Sir Humphrey Davy, or to disparage the fair value 
placed by himself upon his invention. The improve- 
ments are probably those w^hich longer life and addi- 
tional facts would have induced him to contemplate as 
desirable, and of which, had he not been the inventor, 
he might have become the patron." 

" I value it," Davy used to say with the kindliest ex- 
ultation, " more than any thing I ever did : it was the 
result of a great deal of investigation and labor ; but, if 
my directions be attended to, it will save the lives of 
thousands of poor men." 

The principle of the invention may be thus summed 
up. In the Safety-lamp, the mixture of the fire-damp 
and atmospheric air Avithin the cage of wire-gauze ex- 
plodes upon coming in contact wdth the flame, but the 
combustion can not pass through the wire-gauze, and, 
being there imprisoned, can not impart to the explosive 
atmosphere of the mine any of its force. This efiect has 
been attributed to the cooling influence of the metal ; 
but, since the wires may be brought to a degree of heat 
but little below redness without igniting the fire-damp, 
this does not appear to be the cause. 

Professor Playfair has elegantly characterized the Safety-lamp of 
Davy as a present from Philosophy to the Arts ; a discovery in no 
degree the effect of accident or chance, but the result of patient and 
enlightened research, and strongly exemplifying the great use of an 
immediate and constant appeal to experiment. After characterizing 
the invention as the shutting up in a net of the most slender texture of a 



SIR HUMPHREY DAVY. 349 

most violent and irresistible force, and a power that in its tremendous 
eifects seems to emulate the lightning and the earthquake, Professor 
Playfair thus concludes : " When to this we add the beneficial conse- 
quences, and the saving of the lives of men, and consider that the 
effects are to remain as long as coal continues to be dug from the 
bowels of the earth, it may be fairly said that there is hardly in the 
whole compass of art or science a single invention of which one would 
rather wish to be the author. . . . This," says Professor Playfair, 
''is exactly such a case as we should choose to place before Bacon 
were he to revisit the earth, in order to give him, in a small com- 
pass, an idea of the advancement which philosophy has made since 
the time when he had pointed out to her the route which she ought to 
pursue." 

Honors were showered upon Davy. He received from 
the Royal Society the Copley, Royal, and Rumford Med- 
als, and several times delivered the Bakerian Lecture. 
He also received Napoleon's prize for the advancement 
of galvanic researches from the French Institute. The 
invention of the Safety-lamp brought him the public 
gratitude of the united colliers of Whitehaven, of the 
coal proprietors of the north of England, of the grand 
jury of Durham, of the Chamber of Commerce at Mons, 
of the coal-miners of Flanders, and, above all, of the coal- 
owners of the Wear and the Tyne, who presented him 
(it was his own choice) with a dinner-service of silver 
worth £2500. On the same occasion, Alexander, the 
Emperor of all the Russias, sent him a vase, with a letter 
of commendation. In 1817 he was elected to the dignity 
of an Associate of the Institute of France ; next year, at 
the age of forty, he was created a baronet. 

Davy's discoveries form a remarkable epoch in the 
history of the Royal Society during the early part of 
this century, and from 1821 to 1829 almost every volume 
of the Transactions contains a communication by him. 
He was President of the Royal Society from 1820 to 
1827. His administration was not altogether satisfac- 
tory; he was too sensitive. "Above all, he was disap- 
pointed in his life-long foolish hope of one day moving 
the government of Britain to patronize the cause of sci- 
ence" — as great an improbability in the present day as it 
was in poor Davy's time. 

Fond of travel, geology, and sport, Davy visited, for 
the purpose of mineralogy and the angle, almost every 
county of England and Wales. He w^s provided with 



350 DAVY AND FARADAY. 

a portable laboratory, that he might experiment when 
he chose, as well as fish and shoot. In 1827, upon re- 
signing the presidency of the Royal Society, he retired 
to the Continent; in 1829, at Geneva, his palsy-stricken 
body returned to the dust. They buried him at Geneva, 
where a simple monument stands at the head of the hos- 
pitable grave. There is a tablet to his memory in West- 
minster Abbey ; there is a monument at Penzance ; and 
his widow founded a memorial chemical prize in the 
University of Geneva. " His public services of plate, his 
imperial vases, his foreign prizes, his royal medals, shall 
be handed down with triumph to his collateral posterity 
as trophies won from the depths of nescience ; but his 
AVORK, designed by his own genius, executed by his own 
hand, tracery and all, and every single stone signalized 
by his own private mark, indelible, characteristic, and 
inimitable — his avork is the only record of his name. 
How deeply are its foundations rooted in space, and how 
lasting its materials for time !" {North British Mevieio^ 
Xo. 3.) 

One of the most pleasing ej^isodes in the life of Davy 
is the account of his first reception of Michael Faraday, 
described by the latter in a note to Dr. Paris : 

**When I was a bookseller's apprentice," says Faraday, **I was 
very fond of experiment, and very averse to trade. It happened that 
a gentleman, a member of the Royal Institution, took me to hear some 
of Sir H. Davy's last lectures in Albemarle Street. I took notes, and 
afterward wrote them out more fairly in a quarto volume. 

"My desire to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and self- 
ish, and to enter into the sendee of science, which I imagined made 
its pursuers amiable and liberal, induced me at last to take the bold 
step of writing to Sir H. Davy, expressing my wishes, and a hope that, 
if an opportunity came in his way, he would favor my views ; and at 
the same time I sent the notes I had taken of his lectures." 

To this application Sir H. Davy replied as follows : 

To Mr. Faraday. 

'' December 24, 1812. 
*SSiR, — I am far from displeased with the proof you have given me 
of your confidence, and which displays great zeal, power of memory, 
and attention. I am obliged to go out of town till the end of Janu- 
ary : I will then see you at any time you wish. 

' ' It would gratify me to be of any service to you. I wish it may 
be ii) my power. 

" 1 am, sir, your obedient humble servant, H. Davy.'* 



DAVY AND FARADAY. 351 

Early in 1813 Davy requested to see Faraday, and told 
him of the situation of assistant in the Laboratory of 
the Royal Institution, to which, through Sir Humphrey's 
good efforts, Faraday was appointed. In the same year 
he went abroad with Davy as his assistant in experi- 
ments and in writing. Faraday returned in 1815 to the 
Royal Institution, and has ever since remained there. 

There can not be a better testimony than the above 
circumstance to Davy's goodness of heart. 



CAECEL AND HIS LAMP. 

To Carcel, the clockmaker of Paris, we owe the solu- 
tion of an important difficulty in lamp-making — the avoid- 
ance of the projection of the shade from the reservoir. 
In a lamp which he constructed, Carcel made the reser- 
voir for oil at the lower part of the lamp, and placed 
close to it a clock-work which moved a little force-pump, 
the piston of Avhich raised the oil as far as the wick. 
The spring was reached by means of a key. The me- 
chanical means employed by Carcel for raising the oil to 
the burner were as ingenious as elegant ; therefore have 
we changed nothing of the principle of the inventor's 
lamp. The wheel-work that he adopted has always been 
retained, the improvements being secondary points in 
the mechanism. 

Carcel drew but a small profit from his important dis- 
covery. Like many originators of useful inventions, to 
whom we are indebted for the luxury and ease of actual 
life, he left to others the profits and benefit of his works. 
He died in 1812, full of infirmities. Life had been to 
him but a long and painful struggle. When he washed 
to patent and secure to himself the property of his dis- 
covery, and to commence the use of it, he was obliged 
to have recourse to a partner to find the necessary funds. 
It was the apothecary Carreau who joined him: thus 
the patent which was delivered the 24th of October, 
1800, to the inventor of the Mechanical Lamp, bore the 
two names of Carcel and Carreau. But the latter had 
nothing to do with the discovery, though his intervention 
in the enterprise was not without its advantages. Car- 
cel, greatly discouraged, Avould not have followed up the 
Avork he had proposed for himself had it not been for the 
entreaties and encouragement of his friend. However, 
the term of the patent expired without having brought 
any important profit to the two partners. In the Rue 
de I'Arbre Sec at Paris may still be seen the old shop of 
Carcel, occupied to this day by a member of his family. 



OARCEL AND HIS LAMP. 353 

bearing this sign — " Garcel^ InventeurP In the door- 
way of this simple shop may be seen the first model of 
the lamp which Carcel constructed. The hot air which 
passes from the glass chimney of the lamp serves to put 
in motion the mechanism by which the oil is raised to 
the burner. On other lamps is clock-work, constructed 
as by Carcel, the needles of which are put in action by 
the same mechanism which raises the combustible liquido 
— From the £Jngineer jouxubI^ 1857o 



GAS-LIGHTING. 

The production of hydrogen gas in a tobacco-pipe by 
filling the bowl with powdered coal, then luting it over 
and placing it in a fire, is w^ell known ; but even more 
familiar are the alternate bursting out and extinction of 
those burning jets of pitchy vapor, which contribute to 
render a common fire an object so lively, and of such 
agreeable contemplation in the winter evenings. We 
may pursue the subject in tracing the brilliant lights by 
w^hich our streets are illuminated from the obscure re- 
cesses of nature, and showing by Avhat steps that w^hich 
was once thought simply an object of curiosity has been 
applied to a practical purpose of the most useful and 
agreeable kind ; which an able writer, in showing w^hat 
had been done with the gases, felicitously illustrated: 
" One species, or rather a variable mixture of two or 
three, composed of carbon and hydrogen, is made in the 
outskirts of nearly every town now-a-days, in enormous 
quantities, and then sent away from a huge trough or 
jar, or from a heart, to circulate through a system of 
metallic arteries, for the purpose of lighting streets and 
houses." 

The existence and inflammability of coal-gas have been 
known in England for two centuries. In the year 1659 
Thomas Shirley correctly attributed the exhalations from 
'' the burning well" at Wigan, in Lancashire, to the coal- 
beds which lie under that part of the county ; and soon 
after, Dr. Clayton, influenced by the reasoning of Shirley, 
actually made coal-gas, and detailed the results of his la- 
bors in a letter to the Hon. Robert Boyle, w^ho died in 
1691. He says he distilled coal in a retort, and that the 
contents were phlegm, black oil, and a spirit which he 
was unable to condense, but which he confined in a blad- 
der. These are precisely Avhat we now find, but under 
different names : the phlegm is water, the black oil is 
coal-tar, and the spirit is gas. Dr. Clayton several times 
repeated the experiment, and frequently amused his 



GAS-LIGHTING IN CHINA. 355 

friends with burning the gas as it came from the bladder 
through holes made in it with a pin. " This is a hint 
which, in an age more alive to economic improvement, 
might have brought Gas-lighting into operation a cen- 
tury earlier, though the mechanical difficulties might 
have been too great to overcome at that period ; a cir- 
cumstance which has retarded the introduction of so 
many valuable discoveries, as it did that of the steam- 
boat and printing-machine."* 

About a century later (l^SS) Sir James Lowther com- 
municated to the Royal Society a notice of a spontaneous 
evolution of gas at a colliery belonging to him near White- 
haven. While his men were at work, they were surprised 
by a rush of air, which caught fire at the approach of a 
candle, and burned with a flame two yards high and one 
yard in diameter ; they were much frightened, but put 
the flame out by flapping it with their hats, and then all 
ran away. The steward of the works, hearing this, went 
down himself, lighted the air again, which had now in- 
creased, and had some difficulty in extinguishing it. It 
Avas found to annoy the workmen so much that a tube 
was made to carry it offi The tube projected four yards 
above the pit, and at the extremity of it the gas rushed 
out with much force. ''The gas being fired," says the 
account, " it has now been burning two years and nine 
months without any sign of decrease." Large bladders 
were filled in a few seconds from the end of the tube, 
and carried away by persons, who fitted little pipes to 
them, and burned the gas at their own convenience. 
We do not learn what became of this copious supply ; it 
probably diminished as the coal-bed was exhausted. 

Soon after the middle of the last century Bishop Wat- 
son made many experiments on coal-gas, which he details 
in his Chemical Essays : he distilled the coal, passed the 
gas through water, conveyed it through pipes from one 
place to another, and did so much that we are only sur- 
prised he did not introduce it into general use. 

Meanwhile the use of Gas had long been known in a 
distant part of the world. " Whether, or to what ex- 
tent," says Mr. R. C. Taylor, on the coal-fields of Cliina, 
"the Chinese artificially produce illuminating gas from 
* Penny Cydopmdia, art, ** Gas-lighting.'* 



356 EARLY GAS-LIGHTING EXPERIMENTS. 

bitumen coal, we are imcertain. But it is a fact that 
spontaneous jets of gas, derived from boring into coal- 
beds, have for centuries been burning, and turned to that 
and other economical purposes. If the Chinese are not 
manufacturers, they are nevertheless gas consumers and 
employers on a large scale, and have evidently been so 
ages before the knowledge of its application was acquired 
by Europeans. Beds of coal are frequently pierced by 
the borers of salt water, and the inflammable gas is forced 
up m jets twenty or thirty feet in height. From these 
fountains the vapor has been conveyed to the salt-works 
in pipes, and there used for the boiling and evaporating 
of the salt ; and other tubes convey the gas intended for 
lighting the streets and the larger apartments and kitch- 
ens."* 

To return to England. Although the properties of 
coal-gas were known here so long ago, no one thought 
of applying it permanently to a useful object until the 
year 1792, when Mr. Murdoch, an engineer at Redruth, 
in Cornwall, erected a little gasometer and apparatus, 
which produced gas enough to light his own house and 
ofiices. Murdoch appears to have had no imitators, but 
he was not discouraged; and in 1797 he erected a similar 
apparatus in Ayi'shire, where he then resided. In the 
following year he was engaged to put up a gas-work at 
the manufactory of Boulton and Watt at Soho. This 
was the first application of gas in a large way ; but, ex- 
cepting in manufactories or among scientific men, it ex- 
cited little attention until the year 1802, when the front 
of the great Soho manufactory was brilliantly illuminated 
with gas on the occasion of the public rejoicings at the 
Peace. All Birmingham poured forth to view the spec- 
tacle, and strangers carried to every part of the country 
an account of what they had seen. It was spread about 
every where by the newspapers ; easy modes of making 
gas were described; and coal was experimentally dis- 
tilled in tobacco-pipes at the fireside all over the kingdom. 

* Mr. Taylor notices the singular counterpart to this employment 
of natural gas in the valley of Kanawha in Virginia. The geological 
origin, the means of supply, the application to all the purposes of 
manufacturing salt, and of the surplus to illumination, are remarkably 
alike at such distant points as China and the United States. 



GAS-LIGHTING LONDON. 357 

Soon after this, several manufacturers adopted the use of 
gas : a button manufactory at Birmingham used it largely 
for soldering ; Mr. Samuel Clegg first began to construct 
gas apparatus, and abcfut 1806 exhibited gas-lights in the 
front of his manufactory. Halifax, Manchester, and other 
towns followed. 

A single cotton-mill at Manchester used about 900 
burners, and had several miles of pipe laid down to sup- 
ply them ; and Mr. Murdoch, who erected the apparatus 
used in this mill, sent a detailed account of his operations 
to the Royal Society in 1808, for which he received their 
gold medal. The success of Gas-lighting in the cotton 
factory was striking: it was very soon adopted for the 
softness, clearness, and unvarying intensity of the light ; 
and it was free from the inconvenience and danger re- 
sulting from the sparks and frequent snuffing of candles, 
which tended to diminish the hazard of fire, and lessen 
the high insurance premium on cotton-mills. 

Previous to the public display of Gas at Soho, it had, 
however, been applied to similar purposes by a M. Le Bon 
at Paris, who in 1801 lighted up his house and gardens 
with the gas obtained from w^ood and coal, and had it in 
contemplation to light up the city of Paris ; but we find 
nothing farther recorded of M. Le Bon's results. 

Thus we see that, although the Chinese have for ages 
employed natural coal-gas for lighting their streets and 
houses, only within the present century has gas supersed- 
ed in London the dim oil-lights and crystal-glass lamps 
of the preceding century. Dr. Johnson is said to have 
had a prevision of this change when, one evening, from 
the window of his house in Bolt Court, he observed the 
parish lamplighter ascend a ladder to light one of the 
small oil-lamps. He had scarcely descended the ladder 
half way when the flame expired. Quickly returning, he 
lifted the cover of the lamp partially, and thrusting the 
end of his torch beneath it, the flame was instantly com- 
municated to the wick by the thick vapor which issued 
from it. " Ah !" exclaimed the doctor, " one of these 
days the streets of London will be lighted by s^noke^^ 
{Notes and Queries^ No. 127). 

The use of gas, however, made but slow progress in 
the metropolis : it was dirty and disagreeable, and no 



358 wixsor's gas-lighting. 

means had yet been found for purifying the gas, though 
lectures were delivered and experiments made upon the 
subject by a German named Frederick Albert Winsor. 
In 1803 and 1804 he lighted the old Lyceum theatre. 
He took out a patent in 1804, and issued a prospectus 
of a National Light and Heat Company, promising sub- 
scribers of £5 at least £570 per cent, per annum, with a 
prospect of ten times as much. A subscription wtis 
raised, it is said, of £50,000, which was expended in ex- 
periments, w^ithout profit to the subscribers, although 
Winsor gained experience, and the important process of 
purifying gas by lime. In 1807 he lighted one side of 
Pall Mall ; on the king's birthday, June 4, he brilliantly 
illuminated the w^all between Pall Mall and St. James's 
Park; and on August 16 exhibited gas-light in Golden 
Lane. In 1809 the N'ational Light and Heat Company 
applied to Parliament for a charter, but they were op- 




Frederick Albert Winsor, Projector of Street Gas-lighting. 

posed by Mr. Murdoch on the score of prior discovery, 
and the charter was refused. It was, however, subse- 
quently granted, and in 1810 Avas estabhshed the Gas- 
light and Coke Company, in Cannon Row, Westminster ; 
removed to Peter Street, or Horse-ferry Road, previous- 
ly the site of a market-garden, poplars, and a tea-garden. 
Soon after an extensive explosion took place on the 



OPINION OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 359 

premises, when a committee of the Royal Society was, 
at the request of the government, appointed to investi- 
gate the matter. They met several times at the gas- 
works to examine the apparatus, and made a very elabo- 
rate report, in which they stated as their opinion that, 
if Gas-lighting was to become prevalent, the works ought 
to be placed at a considerable distance from all build- 
ings, and that the reservoirs should be small and numer- 
ous, and always separated from each other by mounds 
of earth, or strong party- walls. This committee consisted 
of Sir Joseph Banks, Sir C. Blagden, Col. Congreve, Mr. 
Lawson, Mr. Rennie, and Dr. Young. In the company's 
application to Parliament, one of their witnesses, Mr. Ac- 
cum, the chemist, was bitterly ridiculed by Mr. Brougham, 
F.R.S. ; and Sir Humphrey Davy asked if it were intend- 
ed to take the dome of St. Paul's for a gasometer ! In 
short, as Dr. Arnott remarks, "Davy, Wollaston, and 
Watt at first gave an opinion that coal-gas could never 
be safely applied to the purpose of street-lighting." How- 
ever, the invention progressed, and in 1822 St. James's 
Park was first lighted with gas. Its safety was not, 
however, yet established; for in 1825, on the part of 
government, a committee of the most eminent scientific 
men minutely inspected the gas-works, and reported that 
the occasional superintendence of all the works was nec- 
essary. 

Of the general process of making Gas we need only 
state that it is obtained from coal inclosed in red-hot 
cast-iron or clay cylinders or retorts, when hydro-carbon 
gases are evolved, and coke left behind ; the gas, being- 
carried away by wide tubes, is next cooled and washed 
with water, and then exposed to lime in close purifiers. 
It is then stored in sheet-iron gas-holders, miscalled gas- 
ometers, some of which hold 700,000 cubic feet of gas ; 
and the several London companies have storage for ten 
million cubic feet of gas. Thence it is driven by the 
weight of the gas-holders through cast-iron mains or 
pipes under the streets, and from them by wrought-iron 
service-pipes to the lamps and burners : of the gas-mains 
there are 2000 miles. 

The London Gas Company's works at Vauxhall are 
the most powerful and complete in the world : from this 



360 GAS-LIGHTING. 

point their mains pass across Vauxhall Bridge to west- 
ern London, and by Westminster and Waterloo Bridges 
to Hampstead and Highgate, seven miles distant, where 
they supply gas ^vith. the same precision and abundance 
as at Vauxhall. Their pipes extend 150 miles. 

Gas-lighting has been extended from London through- 
out Great Britain, so that there is now scarcely a small 
town not lighted by gas. The Continental cities slowly 
followed our example ; and it has reached our antipodes. 

Gas has been made from oil and resin, but is too costly 
for street-lighting. Wood and peat are also used. In 
Ireland a village has been lighted with gas made from 
bog-turf. Gas-lights are also used in coal-mines, greatly 
facilitating the operations of the colliers. The greater 
cheapness of coal, in those places where it can be pro- 
cured, will probably always place it above any other ma- 
terial that could be proposed for the manufacture of gas. 

The Lime-ball, the Bude, and the Electric Lights are 
too expensive for street-lighting. Some of the processes 
of artificial illumination have been costly failures : upon 
the Patent Air-light (from hydrocarbons mixed with 
atmospheric air), proposed in 1838, upward of £30,000 
were expended unsuccessfully. , The Atmospheric Bude 
Light is the result of numerous experiments made by 
Mr. Goldsw^orthy Gurney, of Bude, in Cornwall, and is 
now extensively employed in lighting churches and other 
large buildings. Originally it was obtained from an oil 
lamp, the flame from which was acted upon by a current 
of oxygen : subsequently oil-gas was substituted for the 
liquid oil ; but now the gas which is made for lighting 
the streets of towns is employed to produce the flame, 
and the brilliancy is increased by a current of atmos- 
pheric air ingeniously introduced. The Bude Light was 
first used for lighting the House of Commons in the year 
1842 : its cost is about one third the expense of common 
oil, and about one ninth that of composition candles. 



JAMES BEINDLEY AND CANAL NAVIGA- 
TION. 

The Canal, an artificial channel filled with water, is 
used for the transit of goods, for irrigation, and for sup- 
plying towns with water. The New River, by which 
London is in great part provided with water from Hert- 
fordshire, is a canal. The canals by which ancient Egypt 
was intersected were used both for navigation and irri- 
gation. Canals are known to have existed in China be- 
fore" the Christian era. The first canal made in Europe, 
as far as we know, was cut by Xerxes across the low 
isthmus of Athos. Canals were made by the Romans in 
Italy, and in the Low Countries about the outlets of the 
Rhine ; and we have reason to think that they also made 
canals in Britain. But canal-making in modern Europe 
was first practiced by the inhabitants of North Italy and 
Holland. Works of this kind, which are still admired 
by engineers, were executed in Lombardy between the 
eleventh and thirteenth centuries : the canal from Milan 
to the Ticino was made navigable in 1271. The forma- 
tion of canals was begun in the Netherlands in the 
twelfth century, when Flanders became the commercial 
entrepot of Europe. Holland is intersected with canals, 
which have been compared to the public roads in other 
countries. 

The origin of the present system of English Canals 
dates from the year 1755, when an Act of Parliament 
was passed for constructing one eleven miles long, from 
the mouth of Sankey Brook, in the River Mersey, to 
Gerard's Bridge and St. Helen's. It should, however, 
be mentioned that canals had been previously known for 
centuries in this country. The canal from the Trent to 
the Witham, which is the oldest in England, is said to 
have been dug in the year 1134. 

James Brindley, who rose from a childhood of poverty 
and neglect to be a celebrated engineer, was born in 
Derbyshire in 1716. Through his father's dissipated 

Q 



362 JAMES BKINDLEY. 

habits, the boy was employed in farm labor, and allowed 
to grow up almost totally mieducated ; to the end of his 
life, he was barely able to read and write. He is sup- 
posed, however, to have shown some bias toward me- 
chanical invention; for, at the age of seventeen, he 
bound himself apprentice to a millwright at Macclesfield. 
Here he was left frequently by himself for whole weeks 
together, to execute works concerning which his master 
had given him no previous instruction ; these he finished 
in his own way. On one occasion his master was em- 
ployed to construct the machinery of a new kind of 
paper-mill, and, although he had inspected a mill in 
which similar machinery was in operation, it was report- 
ed that he would be unable to finish his contract. 
Brindley was informed of this rumor ; and, as sooii as 
he had finished his week's work, he set out for the mill, 
took a complete survey of the machinery, and after a 
walk of fifty miles, reached home in time to commence 
work on Monday morning. Having thus made himself 
perfectly master of the construction of the mill, he com- 
pleted the machinery, with several improvements of his 
own contrivance. 

Brindley, on the expiration of his apprenticeship, start- 
ed in business on his own account, but did not confine 
himself to the making of mill-machinery. In 1752 he 
contrived an improved engine for draining some coal-pits 
at Clifton, Lancashire ; it was set in motion by a wheel 
30 feet below the surface, and the water for turning it 
was supplied from the Irwell by a subterraneous tunnel 
600 yards long. In 1755 he executed a portion of the 
complex machinery for a silk-mill at Congleton ; and in 
the following year he erected a steam-engine at New- 
castle-under-Lyne, which efiected a saving of one half in 
fuel. 

Brindley's genius was constantly displaying itself by 
the invention of the most beautiful and economical sim- 
plifications. One of these was a method which he con- 
trived for cutting all his tooth and pinion wheels by ma- 
chinery, instead of having them done by hand as hitherto. 
This invention enabled him to finish as much of that sort 
of work in one day as had formerly been accomplished 
in fourteen. 



THE BEIDGEWATER CANAL. 363 

But the character of Brindley's mipd was comprehen- 
siveness and grandeur of conception ; and there speedily 
arose an adequate field for the display of his vast ideas, 
and alnaost inexhaustible powers of execution. In 1755 
was begun the first modern canal actually executed in 
England — the Sankey Brook Navigation, eleven miles 
long. In 1758 he commenced, foi: the Duke of Bridge- 
water, the celebrated Bridgewater Canal, which as noAV 
completed, commences at Manchester and terminates at 
Runcorn, and has a branch to Worsley and Leigh. One 
of his earliest great works was an aqueduct carrying the 
canal across the Irwell ; so that from the aqueduct may 
often be seen seven or eight men slowly dragging a boat 
up the Irwell against the stream, while, about 40 feet 
immediately over the river, a horse or a couple of men 
are enabled to draw with much greater rapidity five or 
six barges fastened one to the other. The canal from 
Worsley to Manchester, with the underground course 
and tunnels, cost £168,000, and is eighteen miles in 
length. With the exception of the part between Wor- 
sley and Leigh, this canal was executed by Brindley in 
five years. 

While the Bridgewater Canal was yet in progress, 
Brindley commenced another canal passing through Staf- 
fordshire, and uniting the Trent and the Mersey. This 
canal is ninety-three miles in length, has ninety-six locks, 
and passes over many aqueducts : it has five tunnels, one 
of which, 2880 yards in length, is cut through Harecastle 
Hill, at more than 200 feet below the surface of the 
earth. The canal was not completed at Brindley's death ; 
but his brother-in-law, Mr. Henshall, successfully finished 
it. Brindley also designed a canal, forty-six miles long, 
called the Stafibrdshire and Worcestershire Canal, for 
the purpose of connecting the Grand Trunk with the 
Severn. He also planned the Coventry Canal, and super- 
intended the execution of the Oxford Canal. These un- 
dertakings opened an internal water-communication be- 
tween the Thames, the Humber, the Severn, and the 
Mersey, and united the great ports of London, Liverpool, 
Bristol, and Hull by canals which passed through the 
richest and most industrious districts of England. 

The canal from the Trent at Stockwith to Chesterfield, 



364 TUE BKIDGEWATEK CANAL. 

forty-six miles long, was Brindley's last public under- 
taking. Phillips, in his History of Inland Navigation^ 
says that Brindley pointed out the method of building 
walls against the sea without mortar; and that he in- 
vented a mode of drawing Avater out of mines by a losing 
and gaining bucket. 

Brindley's designs were the resources of his own mind 
alone. When he was beset Avith any difficulty, he se- 
cluded himself, and Avorked out unaided the means of 
accomplishing his schemes. Sometimes he lay in bed 
two or three days ; but when he arose, he proceeded at 
once to carry his plans into effect, Avithout the help of 
draAvings or models. He knew something of figures, but 
did not much avail himself of their assistance in his cal- 
culations : his habit Avas, to Avork the question chiefly in 
his head, only setting down the results at particular 
stages ; yet his conclusions Avere generally correct. He 
died in 1772, in his fifty-sixth year. 

Brindley Avas an enthusiast in canal navigation. When 
giving his professional evidence before a committee of the 
House of Commons, he expressed himself Avith so much 
contempt of rivers as means of internal navigation that a 
member Avas tempted to ask him for Avhat object rivers 
Avere created ; Avhen Brindley replied, " to feed naviga- 
ble canals." This is characteristic, and probably authen- 
tic; but it was made public by an anonymous corre- 
spondent to a journal, Avliose communications respecting 
Brindley Avere stated by some of his friends to contain 
many inaccuracies. 



JOHN SMEATON: LIGHT-HOUSES AND 
HAEBOES. 

Of John Smeaton, the Civil Engineer, it may well be 
said that he was one of the earliest of "a self-created set 
of men, whose profession owes its origin, not to favor or 
influence, but to the best of all protection, the encourage- 
ment of a great and powerful nation" — in the construc- 
tion of light-houses and harbors, and the undertaking of 
other great public works. 

Smeaton was born in 1724, at Austhorpe, near Leeds, 
in a house built by his grandfather. His father was an 
attorney, and brought him up with a view to the legal 
profession. 

He exhibited at a very early age great strength of un- 
derstanding and originality of genius. His playthings 
were not the toys of children, but the tools with which men 
work ; and he appeared to take greater pleasure in see- 
ing the men in the neighborhood work, and asking them 
questions, than in any thing else. One day he was seen, 
to the no small alarm of his family, on the top of his 
father's barn, fixing up something resembling a wind- 
mill. On another occasion, he watched some men who 
were sinking a pump in a neighboring village, and ob- 
serving them cut off a piece of bored pipe, he procured 
it, and actually made with it a pump that raised water. 
All this was done while he was in petticoats, and before 
he had reached his sixth year. About his fourteenth or 
fifteenth year he had made himself an engine to turn 
rose-work ; he also made a lathe, by Avhich he turned a 
perpetual screw in brass, a machine but little known at 
that time. In this manner he had, by the strength of his 
genius and indefatigable industry, acquired at the age of 
eighteen an extensive set of tools, and rtie art of working 
at most of the mechanical trades without the assistance 
of a master. 

In 1742, in pursuance of his father's design, young 
Smeaton came to London, and attended the courts of 



366 THE EDDYSTONE LIGHT-HOUSE. 

law at Westminster Hall ; but, finding the bent of his 
mind averse to the law, his father yielded to his wishes, 
and allowed him to devote his energies to more congen- 
ial pm'siiits. About the year 1750 he took up the busi- 
ness of a mathematical-instrument maker ; next year he 
experimented with a machine that he had invented for 
measuring a ship's way at sea; and in 1752 and 1753 
Avas engaged in a course of experiments "concerning 
the natural powers of water and wind to turn mills 
and other machines depending on circular motion." 
From thence resulted the mo§t valuable improvements 
in hydraulic machinery, increasing the power one third. 
For these experiments Smeaton received the Copley Gold 
Medal of the Royal Society, of Avhich he had become a 
Fellow. In 1754 he visited Holland and the Nether- 
lands, and the acquaintance he thus obtained with the 
construction of embankments, artificial navigations, and 
similar works, probably formed an imjDortant part of his 
engineering education. 

In 1759 Smeaton communicated to the Royal Society 
an experimental investigation, by which he reduced the 
art of designing wind-mills to general principles. The 
details may be seen in Professor Rankine's Manual of 
the Steam-engine and other Prime Movers^ 1859. 

In 1766 Smeaton commenced the great work which, 
more than any other, may be looked upon as a lasting 
monument of his skill — the erection of the Eddystone 
Light-house, built on the Eddystone rock, about fourteen 
miles south of Plymouth. Two light-houses had before 
been erected on the rock : the first was swept away by 
a storm ; and the second, which was built of timber, was 
destroyed by fire in December, 1755. The immediate 
re-erection of the beacon being highly important, appli- 
cation was made to the Earl of Macclesfield, then Presi- 
dent of the Royal Society, for advice as to the person 
who should be intrusted with the difiicult task. The 
previous light-houses had been designed by non-profes- 
sional men, and ft was felt now that to erect another 
" would not so much require a person who had merely 
been bred, or had rendered himself eminent, in this or 
that profession, but rather one who, from a natural 
genius, had a turn for contrivances in the mechanical 



THE EDDYSTONE LIGHT-HOUSE. 367 

branches of science." Lord MacclesfieM. immediately 
perceived that Smeaton was the man required, and there- 
fore recommended him. He commenced the work, in 
the spring of 1756, by accurately measuring the very ir- 
regular surface of the rock, and making a model of it. 
The cutting of the rock for the foundation was com- 
menced on August 5th of the same year ; the first stone 
was landed on the rock June 20, 1757; the building 
was finished October 9, 1759, and the lantern lighted for 
the first time on the 16th, the whole being completed in 
considerably less than four years, the time originally pro- 
posed, during which there were 421 days' work done 
upon the rock. 

The Eddy stone Light-house is a circular toAver of 
stone sweeping up with a gentle curve from the base, 
and gradually diminishing at the top, somewhat similar 
to the swelling of the trunk of a tree, the upper extrem- 
ity being surmounted with a lantern and gallery. The 
materials of the tower are moorstone, a hard granite, 
and Portland stone. The granite rock was partially 
worked to form the foundations ; and as the rock-joint 
would be more subject to the action of the sea than any 
other, it was found necessary not only that the bed of 
every stone should have a level bearing, but that every 
outside piece should be grafted into the rock, so as to be 
guarded by a border ttiereof at least three inches in 
height above it, which would in reality be equivalent to 
the founding of the building in a socket three inches 
deep in the shallowest part. On Aug. 3, 1756, Smeaton 
fixed the centre point of the building, and traced qpt part 
of the plan on the rock ; and on the 6th nearly the tvhole 
of the work was set out. On Sept. 4, two new steps at 
the bottom of the rock, and the dovetails, were roughed 
out, and some of the beds brought to a level and finished, 
after vejy^-great labor. The stones for the several courses 
W€3^TDnghc:^orked at the quarries according to the en- 
gineer's draughts. 

A part of the\pper surface of the rock having been 
taken carefully ofi,\but without the use .of gunpowder, 
lest it should loosen the rock, six foimdation-courses, 
dovetailed together, wpre raised on the lower part of 
the rock, which brought the whole to a solid level mass. 



368 THE EDDYSTOXE LIGHT-HOUSE. 

These courses, with eight others raised above them, are 
the solid bed of the work. The courses of masonry are 
skillfully dovetailed together, and each layer of masonry 
is very strongly cemented, and connected by oak trenails 
or plugs, the whole being strongly cramped. The gen- 
eral weight of the stones employed is a toit, and some 
few are two tons. In the solid work the centre stones 
were fixed first, and all the courses vv^ere fitted on a plat- 
form and accurately adjusted before they Avere removed 
to the rock. The base of the tower is about 26 feet 9 
inches in diameter, taken at the highest part of the rock ; 
the height of the solid masonry to the top of the stone 
staircase, from the centre of the base, is 28 feet 4 inches. 
The Avhole height of the tower and lantern is 85 feet 7 
inches, or rather more than two fifths the height of the 
London Monument. The upper part of the light-house, 
originally, constructed of wood, was burnt in 1770, and 
renewed in 1774. The Eddystone Light-house was 
Smeaton's first work, and also his greatest ; probably, 
the time and all things considered, it was the most ardu- 
ous undertaking that has fallen to any engineer, and none 
was ever more successfully executed. And now, having 
withstood the storms of a hundred years, the Eddystone 
remains, unmoved as the rock it is built on, a proud 
monument to its great architect. 

Next to the Eddystone Lighl-house, among the many 
useful works executed by Smeaton, ranks Ramsgate Har- 
bor. To his skill the preservation of the old London 
Bridge for many years w^as attributable : in 1761, one of 
the piers being undermined, the bridge was considered 
to b^ in such danger that no one would pass over it ; the 
engineers were perplexed, when an express w^as sent to 
Yorkshire for Smeaton, who immediately sunk a great 
mmiber of stones about the endangered pier, and there- 
by preserved it. The great canal from the Forth to the 
Clyde, the Spurn Light-house, the Calder navigation, and 
some important bridges in Scotland, are also prominent 
among Smeaton's works. On the 16th of September, 
1792, while walking in his garden at Austhorpe, Smeaton 
was attacked with paralysis, and on October 28 he died. 

Smeaton left many valuable records of his professional 
career. In 1771, under his auspices, was established " the 



smeaton's independence. 569 

Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers," who subsequent- 
ly published his reports on public works. His delibera- 
tion and caution were very great ; and so highly was his 
judgment appreciated, that he was called '' the Standing 
Counsel" of his profession, and he was constantly appeal- 
ed to by Parliament on difficult engineering questions. 
He greatly improved the atmospheric steam-engine of 
Newcomen ; he introduced many improvements in math- 
ematical apparatus ; his ardent love of astronomy led 
him to build an observatory at Austhorpe. 

Smeaton uniformly evinced a high feeling of independ- 
ence in respect of pecuniary matters, and w^ould never 
allow motives of emolument to interfere with plans laid 
on other considerations. The Empress Catharine of 
Russia was exceedingly anxious to have his services in 
some great engineering works in her dominions, and she 
commissioned the Princess Daschkaw to ofier him his 
own terras. But his plans and his heart were bent upon 
the exercise of his skill in his own country, and he stead- 
ily refused all the offers made to him. It is reported 
that when the princess found her attempts unavailing, 
she said to him, " Sir, you are a great man, and I honor 
you. You may have an equal in abilities, perhaps, but 
in character you stand alone. The English minister. Sir 
Robert Walpole, w^as mistaken; and my sovereign, to 
her loss, finds in you a man who has no price." 

After Smeaton had retired from his profession, he w^as 
often pressed to superintend engineering works : when 
these entreaties were backed by personal offers of emolu- 
ment, he used to send for an old woman who took care 
of his chambers in Gray's Inn, and say, " Her attendance 
suffices for all my wants ;" a reply which intimated that 
a man whose personal wants were so simple, was not 
likely to break through a prearranged line of conduct for 
mere pecuniary consideration. 

Q2 



INVENTIONS OF JOSEPH BEAMAH. 

This ingenious mechanician was born at Stainsborough, 
in Yorkshire, in 1749, and was intended for his father's 
occupation of a farmer ; but he very early evinced a taste 
for mechanical pursuits, and at the age of sixteen was 
apprenticed to a joiner. He subsequently removed to 
London, where he worked as a journeyman cabinet-maker, 
and next set up in the same business for himself. His 
adoption of the profession of engineer or machinist ap- 
pears to have arisen from his contriving improvements 
in vv^ater-closets. He next invented, and patented in 
1784, the celebrated Bramah Lock ; when he pronounced 
it "not to be within the range of art to. produce a key, 
or other instrument, by which a lock on this principle 
can be opened." 

Bramah is an early example of a man of genius devis- 
ing and carrying out large and extensive schemes for the 
application of machinery to manufactures. Thus, when 
he obtained the patent for his admirable lock, he immedi- 
ately set about the construction of a series of machine- 
tools for shaping with the required precision the barrels, 
keys, and other parts of the contrivance, which, indeed, 
would have utterly failed unless they had been formed 
with the accuracy which machinery alone can give. In 
Bramah's workshop was educated the celebrated Henry 
Maudslay, who worked with him from 1789 to 1796, and 
Avas employed in making the principal tools for his lock. 
Its pecuharity consisted in a novel appUcation of tum- 
blers, or movable obstacles, and the abandonment of the 
use of wards. This lock was greatly improved by Bram- 
ah's sons : its security depends on the doctrine of com- 
binations, or the multiplication of numbers into eacli 
other, which is known to increase in the most rapid pro- 
portion. Bramah's lock was, however, picked in 1817, 
when it was improved by the introduction of false notches ; 
it was again picked in 1851 ; nevertheless, it is still one 
of the most inviolable locks ever contrived. 



BRAMAH >S HYDRAULIC PRESS. Si I 

Among the numerous other inventions of Bramah were 
improvements in water-cocks, pumps, and fire-engines; 
but his greatest work is the Hydraulic Press, a machine 
acting on the principle of the philosophical toy called the 
hydrostatic paradox, and of very great power in com- 
pressing bodies or lifting weights, in drawing up trees 
by the roots, or piles from beds of rivers : woolen and 
cotton goods are compressed by it into the most portable 
dimensions ; and even hay, for military service, is reduced 
to such a state of coercion as to be easily packed on board 
transports. 

Pascal demonstrated this principle and its advantages 
by fixing to the upper end of a cask set upright a very 
long and narrow cylinder. In filling the barrel, and aft- 
erward the cylinder, the simple addition of a pint or two 
of water, which the latter was capable of containing, pro- 
duced the same effect as if the cask, preserving its di- 
ameter throughout, had had its height increased by the 
whole length of the cylinder. Thus the increase of 
weight of a pint or two of water was sufficient to burst 
the bottom of the hogshead by the immense augmenta- 
tion of pressure it occasioned. Now, if we suppose the 
water removed from the cylinder of narrow dimensions, 
and replaced by a solid of equivalent weight, such as a 
piston, it is evident that the pressure must remain every 
where the same. Again, if we suppose the weight of the 
piston to be multiplied by the power of a lever acting on 
its shaft, the pressure will be proportionally augmented, 
so as to produce on the bottom of the cask a pressure 
equivalent to an enormous weight with the exertion of 
very little primitive force on the piston. 

In the Museum of the Commissioners of Patents at 
South Kensington is "the first Hydraulic Press ever 
made," inscribed "Bramah, Inv*. et Fee*., 1796." 

Mr. Bramah next patented the elegant and convenient 
beer-machine for drawing liquors in a tavern-bar from 
barrels in the cellar by means of a force-pump. He also 
improved steam-engine boilers and paper-making machin- 
ery, and invented a machine for making pens by a mechan- 
ical process, by which several nibs, resembling steel pens, 
are cut out of one quill, and fixed in a holder. In 1806 
he contrived a mode of printing, which, being applied to 



372 bramah's other ina^entions. 

the numbering of bank-notes during the issue of one- 
pound notes by the Bank of England, saved the labor of 
100 clerks out of 120. This machine consists of disks or 
wheels, with the nmnbers from 1 to 9 and cut on the 
periphery of each, the whole being mounted upon one 
axle, but to be turning independently of each other. By 
the action of mechanism which is incapable of error, the 
position of one wheel of the series is moved between each 
operation of printing, so that when the machine is prop- 
erly adjusted, it will print a series of numbers in regular 
progression, without the possibiUty of twice producing 
the same number. 

In 1812 Bramah patented a scheme for laying water- 
mains, with force-pumps to throw v/ater for extinguish- 
ing fires, and to supply a lifting power for raising great 
weights. This ingenious inventor died in consequence 
of cold contracted while superintending the uprooting 
of trees in Holt Forest by his Hydraulic Press, in his 
sixty-eighth year, in 1814. 



THOMAS TELFORD AND THE MENAI 
SUSPENSION BEIDGE. 

In the life of this eminent engineer " another striking 
instance is added to those on record of men who have, 
by the force of natural talent, unaided save by upright- 
ness and persevering industry, raised themselves from 
the low estate in which they were born to take their 
stand among the master spirits of the age."* Telford's 
father was a shepherd in the pastoral district of Esk- 
daile, in Dumfriesshire, Avhere, in the parish of Water- 
wick, Thomas, Jiis only son, was born in 1757. He re- 
ceived the rudiments of education at the parish school ; 
and while engaged during the summer season as a shep- 
herd-boy in assisting his uncle, he diligently made use of 
his leisure in studying the books lent to him by his vil- 
lage friends. At the age of fourteen h^ was apprenticed 
to a stone-mason at Langholm : he was for several years 
employed chiefly in his native district ; and in the con- 
struction of plain bridges and farm-buildings, small vil- 
lage churches and manses, he passed a valuable training, 
such as is of singular advantage to the future architect 
or engineer. In 1780, being then about twenty-three, he 
visited Edinburgh for employment, and there, for about 
two years, he paid much attention both to architecture 
and drawing. He then removed to London, and there 
worked upon the quadrangle of Somerset House, under 
Sir William Chambers, the architect. Telford was next 
engaged in Portsmouth Dock-yard upon various build- 
ings for about three years, during which he became 
well acquainted with the construction of graving-docks, 
wharf-walls, and similar engineering works. In 1787 he 
removed to Shrewsbury : subsequently, in Shropshire, he 
built a stone bridge over the Severn ; and, next, the iron 
bridge at Buildwas, consisting of a very flat arch, 130 
feet span ; these being followed by forty other bridges 
in the same county. 

* Trnnsact'wnfi of the Institntion of Civil Engineers. 



3v4 VARIOUS WORKS OF TELFORD. 

The Ellesmere Canal, about 103 miles in length, was 
Telford's first great work, and led him to direct his at- 
tention almost solely to civil engineering. This canal 
crosses the Dee at an elevation of 70 feet, by an aqueduct 
bridge of 10 arches, each 40 feet span, the bed of the 
canal being of cast-iron plates instead of puddled clay 
and masonry. The Pont-y-Cysylte aqueduct bridge is 
still more remarkable, and consists simply of a trough of 
cast-iron plates flanged together, and supported on ma- 
sonry piers 120 feet above low water. The Caledonian 
Canal is another of Telford's principal works, commenced 
in 1802 and opened in 1822. Its entire length (between 
the German and Atlantic Oceans) is 250 miles, of which 
230 miles, friths and lakes, were already navigable ; the 
canal itself is about 20 miles, and cost a million pounds 
sterling. We have not space to describe the other ca- 
nals which Telford wholly or partially constructed. He 
executed many important drainage works, especially of 
Bedford Level. On the Continent he superintended the 
construction of the Goth a Canal in Sweden, for which he 
received a Swedish order of knighthood. 

The works executed by Telford under the Commis- 
sioners of Highland Roads and Bridges are of the great- 
est importance; they intersect the whole of Scotland 
with 1000 miles of new road, and 1200 bridges, in a 
mountainous and stormy region ; Telford also improved 
several harbors, and erected many Highland churches 
and manses. 

Telford's most important harboi'-work is the St. Kath- 
erine's Docks, London, which were constructed with un- 
exampled rapidity. He also built many bridges of con- 
siderable size and improved construction ; but the most 
perfect specimen of his skill as an engineer is the great 
road from London to Holyhead, and the works connect- 
ed with it. The Menai Suspension Bridge is a noble ex- 
ample of his boldness in designing, and practical skilMn 
executing, a work of novel and difiicult character. It 
crosses the Menai Strait, where it connects Caernarvon- 
shire with the Isle of Anglesea. The opposite shores 
being bold and rocky, allowed the roadway of the bridge 
to be 100 feet above high-water mark. The main chains, 
16 in number, are supported on two stone pyramids 



THE MENAI SUSPEIS^SION BRIDGE. ^ 375 

above the roadway, the ends of the chams being secured 
in a mass of masonry built over stone arches between 
each of the pyramids, or piers, and the adjoining shores. 
The first stone was laid by W. A. Pro vis, resident engi- 
neer, August 15, 1819. In 1824 the works Avere so far 
advanced that the only remaining difficulty was, " How 
are the main chains to be put up ?" for no precise details 
had up to that time been determined upon ; which was 
so far an advantage, that the engineer had the benefit of 
full consideration and experience, and many mistakes 
were obviated that must have happened had the details 
been all settled beforehand. In the beginning of May 
the cast-iron segments and saddles were carried up to 
the pyramids, but it was not till April 26, 1825, that the 
first chain was carried across. It was scarcely fixed, 
when one of the men got astride it, and then walked 
over 30 or 40 yards of the middle of the chain, only nine 
inches wide, its height being 125 feet above the water! 
After the second chain had been put up, it was found 
necessary to replace some of the bars which had been 
damaged ; and owing to this, it was practically ascer- 
tained that if one or more links of a chain should at any 
time be injured they could be taken out and replaced. 

During the progress of the work every piece of iron 
was carefully tested ; and, to prevent any injury of the 
metal by oxydation, each piece, after its strength had 
been proved, was cleaned, heated, and, while hot, im- 
mersed in linseed oil ; after remaining in the oil a few 
minutes, that the pores might be filled, the bar was taken 
out, and returned to the heating stove, in which the oil 
was dried by a moderate heat : the oil was thus convert- 
ed into a thin coat of hard varnish, afibrding a complete 
protection from the atmosphere. 

The massive iron castings which are imbedded in the 
rock to form an abutment for the chains are placed upon 
layers of coarse flannel saturated with white-lead and 
oil, which, with a few timber wedges, enables them to 
bear steadily against the rock. On the tops of the sus- 
pension towers are massive cast-iron saddles to receive 
the chains; and between these and the cast-iron beds 
which sustain them are inserted rollers, which allow the 
saddles to move under their immense load when the 



3 76 THE MENAI SUSPENSION BRIDGE. 

chains expand or contract. The operation of raising the 
portions of the chains between the suspension towers oc- 
casioned much anxiety, but was accomplished without 
great difficulty by joining several bars from the top of 
each tower by a hanging scaifold, and elevating the in- 
tervening portion of each chain from a raft 400 feet long 
and 6 feet w^ide by means of a capstan ; and to check 
the vibration occasioned by high winds, the chains are 
tied together by transverse braces. The several chains 
being thus suspended, the roadway of oak planking, with 
felt and tar beneath, was bolted to the underneath f 
and on Jan. 30, 1826, the mails drove over it for the first 
time. In February following repeated gales did much 
damage to the iron-work. 

The main dimensions of the bridge are : extreme length of chains, 
about 1715 feet; height of roadway from water-line, 100 feet ; height 
of each suspending pier from road, 53 feet ; length from pier to pier, 
553 feet ; width of two carriage-ways and footpath in centre, 16 feet. 
The 16 chains consist each of 5 bars 10 feet long ; width, 3 feet by 1 
inch, with 6 connecting links at each joint, which weighs about 50 
lbs.; bars in " cross-section of chain, 80. Total weight of the iron- 
work, 1,373,281 lbs. The chains will bear without any risk 1245*5 
tons, more than the strain produced by the weight of the bridge itself; 
or 732^ tons besides its own weight. 

The thread-like appearance of the suspending rods, 
easily shaken by the wind or by the hand, the vast size 
and lightness of the w^hole, give the idea of a fahy's 
power having stretched a series of chains from the woods 
on the one side to the barren rocks on the other ; and its 
fairy lightness is heightened by contrast with the gigan- 
tic massiveness of the Britannia Bridge at about a mile 
distant. 

Telford left his autobiography, with an elaborate ac- 
count of his labors of more than half a century, and 
other valuable contributions to engineering literature. 
He taught himself Latin, French, Italian, and German. 
He died in 1834, at the age of seventy-seven, and was 
buried near the middle of the nave of Westminster Abbey. 
He was the first president of the Institution of Civil En- 
gineers, to whom he bequeathed his scientific books, 

* It is related that, just previous to the fixing of the last bar, Mr. 
Telford withdrew to his private office at the works, and there knelt in 
fervent prayer to the Giver of all good for the successful completion 
of this great work. 



STATUE OF TELFORD. 377 

prints, drawings, etc., and £2000 to provide annual pre- 
miums to be given by the Council. In their house is a 
fine portrait of Telford. 

As we reflect upon the noble works which Telford left 
for posterity, we feel that the Eskdaile sheph^'d-boy has 
duly earned every honor he has received. 

His services have been appreciated by the public, but 
by the public alone. He received the honor of knight- 
hood from the King of Sweden, but no mark of distinc- 
tion from the King of England — no memorial from a 
country whose scientific eminence he illustrated, and 
whose commercial power he enlarged. By subscription 
of a few of his friends and admirers, however, a marble 
statue of the great engineer has been placed in the Islip 
Chapel at Westminster Abbey. It is from the chisel of 
Baily, R.A., who received for it but £1000, a third of the 
sum usually charged for such a work. The Dean de- 
manded £300 for permission to place the statue in the 
Abbey, but subsequently low^ered it to £200, Avhich de- 
mand was acquiesced in. But Telford's " various works 
are conspicuous ornaments to the country, and speak for 
themselves as the most durable monument of a well- 
earned fame. In number, magnitude, and usefulness, 
they are too intimately connected with the prosperity of 
the British people to be overlooked or forgotten in future 
times, and the name of Telford must remain permanent- 
ly associated with that remarkable progress of public 
improvement which has distinguished the age in which 
he lived."* 

* Cojmcil of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Two or three days 
before Mr. Telford's death, he caused to be completed, under his di- 
rection, the corrected MS. of the detailed account of the principal un- 
dertakings which he had planned or lived to see executed. This work, 
edited by Mr. John Rickman, one of Mr. Telford's executors, was 
published in 1838. 



JOHN*EENNIE: DOCKS AND BEIDGES. 

Few of the great masters in this mechanical age have 
executed such stately works for posterity as John Ren- 
nie, the designer of three of the noblest bridges in the 
world, in addition to numerous other monuments of en- 
ghieering skill. 

John Rennie was the son of a respectable Scottish 
farmer, and was born on June 7, 1761, at Phantassie, in 
the county of East Lothian. He was the youngest of 
nine children, and received the first rudiments of educa- 
tion at the school of his native parish ; and to a trifling 
circumstance connected with his daily journeys thither 
liis friends ascribe his acquisition of a taste for mechanics, 
which fixed the course of the future man. The school 
was situated on the opposite side of a brook, the usual 
mode of crossing which was by stejDping-stones ; but 
when the freshes were out, it was necessary to employ a 
boat, Avhich was kept at the workshop of Mr. Andrew 
Meikle, a millwright, well known in Scotland for his im- 
provements in the threshing machine. This led him to 
Mr. Meikle's workshop, where he learned his first lessons 
in mechanics ; and, ere he had completed his eleventh 
year, he had constructed a wind-mill, a pile-engine, and a 
steam-engine. He subsequently received instruction in 
elementary mathematics at Dunbar, wl>ere, on the pro- 
motion of the master, he for a short time conducted the 
school. He did not pursue his studies far in pure mathe- 
matics, but applied himself chiefly to elementary mechan- 
ics, drawing machinery, and architecture. He also at- 
tended the courses of lectures on mechanical philosophy 
and chemistry which were given at Edinburgh by Drs. 
Robison and Black. Prepared thus with what books 
and professors could teach, he entered the practical world. 
Meanwhile, he had been employed by Mr. Meikle as a 
workman, under whose superintendence he assisted in 
the erection of some mills in the neighborhood; and he 



I 



kennie's bridges. 379 

is said to have rebuilt on his own account a mill near 
Dundee. It is probable that soon after this work was 
finished, or about 1780, Rennie left Scotland for Lon- 
don, on his way visiting the great manufacturing towns 
in the north of England, and inspecting their principal 
works. 

Soon after he was established in the metropolis Mr. 
Rennie was employed in the construction of two steam- 
engines, and the machinery connected with them, at the 
Albion Flour Mills, Blackfriars Bridge. These engines 
were of the kind called double, which Mr. Watt had just 
then patented ; each of them was of fifty-horse power, 
and the two could turn twenty mill-stones. All the 
wheel-work was made of cast-iron instead of wood, which 
had before been used in such machinery. Mr. Rennie's 
skill was strikingly manifested in the methods which he 
adopted to render the movements steady, and by this 
great work he at once established his character as a ma- 
chinist. 

Mr. Rennie continued to the last to be employed in 
the construction of steam-engines, or of the different 
kinds of machinery to which, as a first mover, steam is 
applied; and in its execution he may be said to have 
been the first who made that skillful distribution of the 
pressures, and gave those just proportions to the several 
parts, which have rendered the work of Englishmen su- 
perior to that of any other people. He was likewise ex- 
tensively engaged in designing or superintending various 
important public works. Between 1799 and 1803 he con- 
structed the stone bridge at Kelso, below the junction of 
the Tweed and Teviot. This handsome structure consists 
of five elliptical arches, carrying a level roadway ; and 
over each pier are two small columns which support the 
entablature. Mr. Rennie also built stone bridges at Mus- 
selburgh and other places in Scotland ; but his master- 
piece of this class is the Waterloo Bridge over the Thames, 
which has no parallel in Europe. This bridge was begun 
in 1811, and finished in six years: it is built of granite, 
"in a style of solidity and magnificence hitherto un- 
known. There elliptical arches, with inverted arches be- 
tween them, to counteract the lateral pressure, were car- 
ried to a greater extent than in former bridges; and 



380 rennie's bridges. 

isolated coffer-dams upon a great scale, in a tidal river, 
with steam-engines for pumping out the water, were, it is 
believed, for the first time employed in this country; anc^^ 
the level roadway, which adds so much to the beauty a^l 
well as the convenience of the structure, was there adopt- 
ed." Canova dignified this as " the noblest bridge in the 
world," adding that " it alone was worth coming from 
Rome to London to see." 

Baron Dupin, in classic eulogy, styled it " a colossal 
monument worthy of Sesostris and the Caesars." Wells, 
in his History of the JBedford Levels observes of this 
bridge, " that a fabric of this immensity, presenting a 
straight horizontal line stretching over nine large arches, 
should not have altered more than a few inches (not five 
in any one part) from that straight line, is an instance 
of strength and firmness elsewhere unknown, and al- 
most incredible." The bridge itself cost about £400,000, 
which, by the apJDroaches, Avas increased to a million of 
money. 

Rennie, besides the elegant iron bridge over the Wit- 
ham in Lincolnshire, designed and constructed the South- 
Avark Bridge over the Thames. It consists of three cast- 
iron arches, the centre 240 feet span, and the two side 
arches 210 feet each ; the ribs forming a series of hollow 
masses, or voussoirs, similar to those of stone ; a principle 
new in the construction of cast-iron bridges, and very suc- 
cessful. The segmental pieces and braces are kept to- 
gether by dovetailed sockets and long cast-iron wedges, 
so that bolts are unnecessary. 

Rennie's chief work connected with inland navigation 
is the Kennet and Avon Canal, fifty-seven miles in length, 
and requiring all the skill of the engineer to conduct it 
through a very rugged country. He also gave a plan 
for draining the fens at Witham, which w^as executed in 
1812. 

The London Docks, and the East and ^est India 
Docks at Blackwall, were executed from Rennie's plans. 
He likewise formed the new Docks at Hull (where also 
he constructed the first dredging-machine used in this 
country) ; also the Prhice's Dock at Liverpool, and those 
of DubHn, Greenock, and Leith, the latter with a stupen- 
dous sea-wall. Mr. Rennie also built the pier at Holy- 



rennie's bridges. 381 

head. To these works must be added the insular pier, 
or Breakwater, nearly a mile in extent, protecting Plym- 
outh Sound from the tremendous force of the full roll 
of the Atlantic in southerly or southwestern gales. It 
is constructed on true hydrodynamical principles, and in 
its formation 3 J million tons of stone have been deposited. 

Rennie's last work was his design for the present Lon- 
don Bridge, unrivaled in the world " in the perfection of 
proportions and the true greatness of simplicity." He 
died in 1821 ; but the charge of its construction was 
confided to his son, now Sir John Rennie, who, in 1831, 
finished the magnificent w^ork. 

The principal undertakings in which Rennie was en- 
gaged are estimated from his reports to have cost forty 
millions sterling. His w^orks were costly; but it has 
been well said that " they were made for posterity ; they 
were never of slight construction, nor would he ever en- 
gage in any undertaking were a sufticiency of funds was 
not forthcoming to meet his views." His industry was 
untiring : he was rarely occupied in business less than 
twelve hours a day. Like Jesse Ramsden, he Avas strik- 
ingly clear in communicating information to others ; yet 
rarely had either of them recourse for illustration to any 
other instrument than a two-foot rule, which each always 
carried in his pocket. Rennie owed his good fortune to 
no lucky accident or successful artifice, but to talent, in- 
dustry, prudence, perseverance, boldness of conception, 
soundness of judgment, and habits of untiring application. 
His remains rest in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, be- 
side the grave of Robert Mylne, the architect of Black- 
friars Brido'e. 



n 



^^THE FIEST PRACTICAL STEAM-BOAT 

The story of the Steam-boat is one of the most mter- 
esting chapters in the records of human invention. The 
accounts of vessels propelled by machinery lead us 
through a retrospect of many centuries and the oldest 
countries. The paddle-wheel is stated to have been used 
by the ancient Egyptians, but not upon admissible au- 
thority. The wheel of a chariot in an Egyptian painting- 
has often been mistaken for a paddle-wheel ; a precisely 
similar mistake has been made in describing one of the 
sculptured slabs from ISTineveh ; and Sir H. Rawlinson 
and Mr. Layard assured Mr. Macgregor that in their 
Assyrian researches they have not discovered any indi- 
cation of the use of machinery in propelling vessels. 

We find some indistinct records of vessels propelled 
by wheels. An old work on China contains a sketch of 
a vessel moved by four paddle- Avheels, perhaps in the 
seventh century ; but the earliest distinct notice of this 
means of propulsion appears to be by Robertus Valterius, 
A.D. 1472, who gives several wood-cuts representing pad- 
dle-wheels. The account of Blasco de Garay's experi- 
ment in 1543 is now generally discredited (see page 
275) ; but boats propelled by paddle-wheels are mention- 
ed by many early writers, such as Julius Scaliger in 1558 ; 
Bourne in 1578; and Roger Bacon in 1597. Among 
the earliest projectors we find David Ramsey, one of the 
pages to King James I., who, with another, in 1618, ob- 
tained a patent for " divers newe apt formes or kinds of 
engines for ploughing without horse or oxen ; as also to 
raise water," and " to make boats for carriages runnin 
upon the water as' swift in calmes, and more safe in 
storms, than boats full sayled in great windes ;" and in 
1630, " to raise water from lowe pits by fire" (the steam- 
engine) ; "to make boats, ships, and barges to goe 
against the wind and tyde." Passmg over a few similar 
mventions, we come to the Marquis of Worcester's patent 
(in 1661) of the application of a current to turn paddle- 



PAPIN. PRINCE KOBERT. 383 

wheels on a vessel, which was propelled by winding up 
a rope. Edward Bushnell, in 1678, described a mode of 
rowing ships by connecting the oars on both sides with 
the heaving of a capstan. 

In 1681, Papin, the improver of steam-engines for 
pumping, proposed to the Royal Society " a new-invented 
boat, to be rowed by oars moved with heat," which was 
recommended by Leibnitz. It is clear also that Papin 
conceived steam might be employed to propel ships by 
paddles; for, as early as 1690, in a paper published in 
the Acta JEmditorum^ Papin says: "Without doubt, 
oars fixed to an axis could be most conveniently made 
to revolve by our tubes. It would only be necessary to 
furnish the piston-rod with teeth, which might act on a 
toothed wheel, properly fitted to it, and which, being fit- 
ted on the axis to which the oars are attached, would 
communicate a rotary motion to it." During Papin's 
residence in England, he witnessed an interesting experi- 
ment made on the Thames, in which a boat, constructed 
from a design of the Prince Palatine Robert, was fitted 
with revolving oars, or paddles, attached to the two ends 
of a long axle, going across the boat, and which received 
their motion from a trundle, working a wheel turned by 
horses. The velocity with which this horse-boat was 
propelled was so great that it left the king's barge, 
manned with sixteen rowers, far astern in the race of trial. 

In 1682, a horse tow-vessel was used at Chatham: it 
had a wheel on each side, connected by an axle across 
the boat, the paddles being made to revolve by horses 
moving a wheel turned by a trundle fixed on the axle. 
In 1692, Anthony Duvivian patented "a very easy and 
not costly machine for making a ship go against wind 
and tide." In 1696, Thomas Savery patented his inven- 
tion for moving a paddle-wheel on each side of the ship 
by men turning round the capstan. By some writers it 
is stated that Savery proposed to drive a paddle-wheeled 
vessel by his steam-engine, already described at page 279 ; 
whereas he merely believed that it might be very useful 
to ships, but dare not meddle with that matter. " It ap- 
pears," says Mr. Bennet Woodcroft, " to be a proof of 
Savery's sound mechanical views that he knew liis en- 
gine, although doubtless the most effective of its kind at 



384 DICKENS. HULLS. GENEYOIS. 

that period, to be incapable of propelling a boat advan- 
tageously." 

In 1724 John Dickens patented his contrivance by- 
floats for moving ships ; and in 1729, Dr. John Allen his 
engines for navigating ships in a calm, by forcing water 
through the stern of the ship, at a convenient distance 
under the surface of the water, as well as by firing gun- 
powder in vacuo, and applying its whole force to move 
the engines. 

In 1736 Jonathan Hulls patented his machine. He 
placed a paddle-wheel on beams projecting over the 
stern, and it was turned by an atmospheric engine act- 
ing, in conjunction with a counterpoise weight, upon a 
system of ropes and grooved wheels. His mode of ob- 
taining a rotary motion was new and ingenious, and 
would enable a steam-boat to be moved through water ; 
but it was not practically useful. The cranks, as de- 
scribed by Hulls, receive rotary motion from the axis on 
which they are placed, and do not, as often stated, im- 
part that motion to it; had he discovered this applica- 
tion of the crank, ''there can be little doubt," says Mr. 
Woodcroft, "that the steam-engine would then have 
been applied not only to propel boats, but to various 
other useful purposes." 

A prize being offered by the Academy of Sciences for 
the best essay on the manner of impelling vessels with- 
out wind, it was obtained in 1752 by Daniel Bernouilli, 
who proposed inclined planes moved circularly like the 
sails of a wind-mill, two at each side of the vessel, and 
two more behind, to be moved by men aboard, by steam- 
engines, or on rivers by horses placed to the barges. In 
1760, J. H. Genevois, a clergyman of Berne, published his 
" Great Principle," to concentrate power by a series of 
springs to work oars for propelling vessels. He also pro- 
posed an atmospheric steam-engine to bend the springs, 
and the expansive force of gunpowder for the same pur- 
pose. He states that, since his arrival in England, he 
had learned that thirty years before a Scotchman had 
proposed to make a ship sail with gunpowder, but that 
thirty barrels of gunpowder had scarce forwarded the 
ship ten miles. 

On January 5, 1769, James Watt patented his im 



watt's steam-boat engines. 385 

provements on the steam-engine, one of which, namely, 
the " fom'th," was for causing the steam to act above the 
piston as well as below it. This was the first step by 
which the steam-engine was successfully used to propel 
a vessel ; and this great '' improvement," says Mr. Wood- 
croft, " was applied to the first practically-propelled steam- 
boat, and is still used in the present system of steam nav- 
igation." 

In 1774, the Comte d'Aiixiron and M. Perrier are 
stated to have used a paddle-wheel steam-boat on the 
Seine, but with poor success. Desblanes, in 1782, sent 
the model to the Conservatoire (still there) of a vessel 
in which an endless chain of floats is turned by a hori- 
zontal steam-engine. 

In 1779, Matthew Wasborough, an engineer of Bristol, 
added to. Watt's improvement of the double-acting cylin- 
der-engine by converting a rectilinear into a continuous 
circular motion ; but it did not act well, and was super- 
seded by the invention of James Pickard in 1780, which 
is no other than the present connecting-rod and crank, 
and a fly-wheel, being the second and last great improve- 
ment in the steam-engine, which enabled it to be of serv- 
ice in propelling vessels. 

In the following year, 1781, James Watt patented his 
" sun and planet motion," or method of applying the vi- 
brating or reciprocating motion of steam-engines to pro- 
cure a continued rotative or circular motion round an 
axis or centre. In the same year the Marquis de Jouf- 
froy constructed a steam-boat at Lyons, 140 feet in 
length, with which he is said to have experimented suc- 
cessfully on the Seine ; but Mr. Macgregor states that 
no description of the machinery of this vessel is given 
before that pubhshed in 1816 by the Marquis de Jouf- 
froy, who gives a sketch of the steam-boat, a copy of 
Avhich is in our Great-Seal Patent-Oflice Library. 

In 1785 Joseph Bramah patented a mode of propelling 
vessels by an improved rotary engine, by means either 
of a paddle-wheel, or what may be called a '' Screw Pro- 
peller," or a wheel Avith inclined fans or wings, like the 
fly of a smoke-jack, or the vertical sails of a wind-mill, 
fixed on or beyond the stern, about Avhcre the rudder 
is usually placed; "its movement being occasioned by 

R 



386 Symington's first expekiment. 

means of a horizontal spindle or axletree, conveyed to 
the engine through or above the stern-end of the ship." 
'' This," says Mr. Woodcroft, " was, without doubt, the 
best mode of steam-propelling that had been then sug- 
gested ; for here the steam would so act as directly to 
produce a circular motion on the propeller-shaft. There 
is, however, no account of Bramah having tried this 
mode." 

On June 5, 1785, William Symington, an engineer of 
Wanlock-head lead-mines, patented a mode of obtaining 
rotary motion from a steam-engine by chains, ratchet 
wheels, and catches ; but it was inferior to the crank of 
Pickard, or the sun and planet wheel of Watt. Experi- 
ments conducted about the same time at Dalswinton, in 
Scotland, resulted, in 1787, in the successful use of a 
steam-engine by Miller, Taylor (tutor to Miller's sons), 
and Symington, to propel a vessel by paddle-wheels, 
which worked one before the other in the centre of the 
boat. 

The first experiment was performed on the lake at Dalswinton in 
October, 1788, when the engine, mounted in a frame, was placed upon 
the deck of a double pleasure-boat. " We then proceeded" (says Tay- 
lor) '■ ' to action ; and a more complete, successful, and beautiful experi- 
ment was never made by any man, at any time, either in art or sci- 
ence. The vessel moved delightfully, and, notwithstanding the small- 
ness of the cylinders (4 inches dia.), at the rate of five miles an hour. 
After amusing themselves a few days, the engine was removed, and 
carried into the house, where it remained as a piece of ornamental 
furniture for a number of years." 

The boat was twenty-five feet long and seven broad, and was pro- 
pelled by two paddle-wheels, placed one forward and the other aft of 
the engine, in the space between the two hulls of the double boat. 
The engine, now become a curiosity, was most laboriously sought for 
by Mr. Bennet Woodcroft. 

On the death of Mr. Miller in 1815, the engine came into the pos- 
session of his eldest son, Mr. Patrick Miller ; and in 1828 it was sent 
by him, packed in a large deal case, to Messrs. Coutts and Co., bank- 
ers, 59 Strand, London. In this establishment the engine was kept 
until February 17, 1837, on which day it was removed to the store 
warehouse of Messrs. Tilbury and Co., 49 High Street, Marylebone. 
Here it remained till the 31st of January, 1846, and then it was for- 
warded to Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie, of 63 Queen Street, Edinburgh. 
Beyond this it could not be traced for a period of several years. 

Mr. Bennet Woodcroft did not, however, relax in his search, and at 
length ascertained that the engine was sold by Mr. Mackenzie's direc- 
tion to Mr. Kirkwood, a plumber of Edinburgh, who removed it from 



387 

the framing, and threw it into a corner for the purpose of mehing : 
this intention, however, was not carried into effect, doubtless owing 
to the death of Mr. Kirkwood. It was subsequently found in the 
possession of Messrs. William Kirkwood and Sons, from whom it was 
purchased, and dispatched to the Great-Seal Patent Office on the 19th 
of April, 1853. Subsequently it was transmitted to Messrs. Penn, 
engineers, of Greenwich, who gratuitously reinstated it in a frame, 
and put it again in working order, as an object of great public inter- 
est. The engine was returned to Mr. Woodcroft as good as new, 
January 4th, 1855, and on the 29th of January, 1857, it was removed 
from the Great-Seal Patent Office to the Patent Museum at South 
Kensington. 

Symington's engine comprises several features of remarkable inter- 
est to engineers. The upper part of each cylinder is enlarged, so as 
to prevent the overflow of the water used for keeping the piston steam- 
tight, upon the plan used by Newcomen. The lower part of each 
cylinder is Watt's condenser and air-pump, not separated from the 
cylinder, as patented by Watt, but attached to it. The valves are 
opened and closed by an improved arrangement of Beighton. 

For Mr. Taylor's efforts to introduce Steam Naviga- 
tion, his widow received a pension from government of 
£50 per annum, granted by the then Lord Liverpool ; 
and in 1837, each of his four daughters received a gift of 
£50 through Lord Melbourne. This is, however, but a 
miserable reward for the valuable services rendered. 
Mr. Miller sought no pecuniary reward, and fortunately 
he needed none : he had built eight vessels to improve 
naval architecture, but was refused a license to make ex- 
periments with one, it not being according to statute ! 

We have been led by the above curious story of the 
search for Symington's steam-engine somewhat out of 
the order of time. To return: in 1787, Mr. Miller de- 
scribed to the Royal Society experiments made by him 
in the Frith of Forth, in a double vessel 60 feet long, put 
in motion by his water-wheel, wrought by a capstan 
with five bars and a toothed wheel working in a trundle 
fixed on the axis of the water-wheel. The steam-boat 
was three-masted, and made sundry tacks in the Frith, 
with four men, at the rate of four miles an hour.* 

* In 1787 Mr. Miller published a pamphlet (now scarce) on the 
subject of propelling boats by paddle-wheels turned by men, with 
drawings by Alexander Nasmyth. In 1825 Mr. Miller's son also 
published a pamphlet, in which he claims for his father the invention 
of Steam Navigation, and states that he (the father) had expended in 
experiments the sum of nearly £30,000. The pamphlet of Mr. Miller, 
sen., is reprinted in Mr. Woodcroft's work on Steam Navigation. 



388 THE "CHAKLOTTE DUNDAS ' STEAM-BOAT. 

Meanwhile the subject was hotly pursued in the United 
States, where, in 1788, John Fitch and James Ramsey 
patented improvements in a steam -boat which went 
eighty miles in one day, worked by paddles perpendicu- 
larly. Fitch, however, was subsequently reduced to 
poverty by his project, and terminated his life by plung- 
ing into the Alleghany. Ramsey, being refused a patent 
in America, came to England, and here patented several 
improvements ; but, just as he had completed his steam- 
boat, he died ; it was, however, floated in the Thames in 
1793, against wind and tide, at four knots an hour. It 
appears that these two inventors had long conceived the 
project of propelling vessels by steam-power before they 
experimented ; for, in 1784, Ramsey mentioned to Gen- 
eral Washington the project of Steam Navigation, and 
Fitch showed the general a model of his proposed boat. 

In the year 1801, Thomas Lord Dundas, of Kerse, w^ho 
was acquainted with Mr. Miller's labors, and who was 
an extensive owner of property in the Forth and Clyde 
Canal, employed Mr. Symington to make experiments on 
steam-boats, to be substituted for the horses then em- 
ployed to draw the vessels on the canal. These experi- 
ments in two years cost £7000 ; and the result was the 
production of the first practical Steam-boat, named the 
Charlotte Dundas^ in honor of his lordship's daughter, 
the lamented Lady Milton. "This vessel," says Mr. 
Woodcroft, " might, from the simplicity of its machinery, 
have been at work to this day, with such ordinary repairs 
as are now occasionally required to all steam-boats." In 
the steamer there was an engine with the steam acting 
on each side of the piston (Watt's patented invention), 
working a connecting-rod and crank (Pickard's patent), 
and the union of the crank to the axis of Miller's im- 
proved paddle-wheel (Symington's patent). Thus had 
Symington the undoubted merit of having combined to- 
gether for the first time those improvements which con- 
stitute the present system of Steam Navigation, 

Although the experiments with this boat were highly 
successful, the proprietors of the Forth and Clyde Canal 
declined to adopt it, from an opinion that the waves it 
created would damage the banks. Lord Dundas, how- 
ever, entertained a more favorable opinion on the subject, 



THE "CHAELOTTE DUNDAS" STEAM-BOAT. 389 

and recommended to the Duke of Bridgewater the adop- 
tion of Symington's steam-boat. His grace at first 
doubted the utility of the invention ; but, after having 
seen a model, and received explanations from Mr. Sy- 
mington, he gave him an order to build eight boats sim- 
ilar to the Charlotte Dundas^ to ply on his canal. Sy- 
mington returned to Scotland in high hope, but was 
doomed to disappointment ; for, on the same day that 
the committee on the Forth and Clyde Canal refused to 
allow his boats to be employed, he received the intelli- 
gence of the death of the Duke of Bridgewater. 

Unable longer to struggle against his misfortunes, and 
his resources being exhausted, Symington laid up his 
boat in a creek of the canal, where it remained a number 
of years exposed to public view. He next abandoned 
his own old engine, and obtained a patent for applying a 
Double-action Reciprocating Engine to a boat, and for 
placing his crank upon the axis of the paddle-wheel, 
which was a very important discovery and improvement. 
From the establishment of this combination of machinery 
to a boat, no improvement on his system has been effect- 
ed either in this or any other country. 

In the following year, 1789, Miller and his fellow-ex- 
perimenters constructed an engine of about twelve-horse 
power (or twelve times the power of the first) at the 
Carron Works. This was mounted in the large double 
boat which had formerly run against the Custom-house 
boat at Leith. Except in size, this machine resembled 
the former model. This boat was tried on the Forth 
and Clyde Canal, performed very successfully, and at- 
tained a speed of nearly seven miles an hour ; but the 
hull being much too slight for permanent use as a steam- 
boat, or for taking out to sea, it was, soon after the trial, 
dismantled. 

Satisfactory as was the result of these experiments, 
they did not immediately lead to the introduction of 
Steam Navigation, and several unsuccessful schemes 
were tried in this country and North America before 
this was effected. One of these, Ramsey's on the Thames, 
has been already mentioned. About this time Dr. Cart-, 
Wright contrived a steam-barge, and explained it to Ful- 
ton, as some say, in 1793, when he was studying painting 



390 SYMINGTON S FATE. 

under West ; but others date it a few years later, when 
he was introduced to Dr. Cartwright during his journey 
to Paris in 1796. However this might be, it is evident 
that Fulton's attention was directed to the subject about 
this time. Golden, his biographer, states that he made 
drawings of an apparatus for Steam Navigation in 1793 ; 
he submitted them to Lord Stanhope, who, in 1795, made 
experiments in a steam-boat propelled by duck-feet pad- 
dles, with which, however, he could not obtain a greater 
speed than three miles an hour. 

About the year 1825 Mr. Symington memorialized the 
Lords of the Treasury, in consequence of which the sum 
of £100 was awarded from his majesty's privy purse; 
and a year or two afterward, a farther sum of £50. He 
had cherished the hope that an annual allowance might 
be procured, but in this he was disappointed. He re- 
ceived a small sum from the London steam-boat projDrie- 
tors, through the influence of Mr. James Walker ; and in 
the decline of life, several kind relatives and friends con- 
tributed to Symington's support: among the number 
was Lord Dundas. Such was the fate of the inventor of 
" the first practical steam-boat." 

Although Symington's experiments did not lead to 
the immediate adoption of steam-vessels for commercial 
purposes, they probably tended in no unimportant degree 
to their subsequent profitable establishment in America 
and Great Britain, for among the numerous individuals 
who inspected Symington's vessel with interest were 
Fulton and Bell. After Fitch and Ramsey, Chancellor 
Livingston attempted to build a steamer on the Hudson, 
and in 1797 he applied to the Legislature of New York 
for exclusive privileges to navigate boats by a steam-en- 
gine. Though his project excited much ridicule, the 
privilege was granted, on condition that he should with- 
in twelve months produce a steam-vessel which should 
attain a mean rate of four miles an hour. This he failed 
to accomplish, though assisted by an Englishman named 
Nesbit, and by Brunei (afterward Sir Mark Isambard) ; 
consequently his grant or patent became void. Shortly 
afterward, being at Paris,* as minister from the United 

* While at Paris, Fulton submitted to Napoleon I. his plan of 
Steam Navigation, when, it was long said, Napoleon coldly received 



NAPOLEON I. AND FULTON. 391 

States, Livingston conversed with Fulton on the subject 
of steam-boats, and they subsequently conjointly complet- 
ed a boat of considerable size. 

Meanwhile, in 1804, John Stevens, of Hoboken, near 
New York, tried a small boat 22 feet long, which attain- 
ed, for short distances, seven or eight miles an hour. 

Mr. Sime, M.A., has thus vividly narrated Fulton's im- 
portant share in the success of Steam Navigation : 

It was reserved for an American citizen to execute, and an Ameri- 
can river to witness, an enterprise the honor of which properly be- 
longs to Scotland. Robert Fulton visited Europe toward the close of 
the last century, and made several attempts, both in Britain and 
France, to propel vessels by steam. Watt and Boulton supplied him 
with machinery ; and many of his ideas were borrowed from Miller 
of Dalswinton, and Symington, whose steam-boat he inspected when 
in Scotland.* From the first Fulton regarded the steamer as a 
means of developing the vast resources of the Western States of the 
Union, where 50,000 miles of river navigation, through a rich and 
fertile country, invited capital, enterprise, and population. Fourteen 
years elapsed before success crowned his labors ; many difficulties and 
disappointments were encountered ; and once, when a vessel which he 
had built was ready for an experimental trip on the Seine at Paris, 
the boat broke in two, and the machinery carried the fragments to the 

the projector. Marshal Marmont, in his Memoirs, says that Bona- 
parte, who, from his education in the artillery, had a natural preju- 
dice against novelties, treated Fulton as a quack, and would not listen 
to him. M. Louis Figuier also writes that Bonaparte refused to place 
the matter in the hands of the Academy. The following letter from 
Napoleon, dated from the Camp at Boulogne, 21st of July, 1804, and 
addressed to M. de Champagny, Minister of the Interior, proves the 
contrary : 

^'I have just read the project of Citizen Fulton, an engineer, which 
you sent me much too late, for it seems capable of changing the face 
of the world. At all events, I desire that you will immediately place 
the examination of it in the hands of a committee, composed of mem- 
bers of the Institute, for it is to them that the scientific men of Europe 
will naturally look for a decision on the question. A great physical 
truth stands revealed before my eyes. It will be for these gentlemen 
to see it, and endeavor to avail themselves of it. As soon as the 
report is made, it will be sent to you, and you will forward it to me. 
Let the decision be given in a week, if possible, for I am impatient to 
hear it. Napoleon. 

''Camp of Boulogne, 21st July, 1804." 

* Before he returned to America Fulton visited England, and there 
induced Symington to afi"ord him much information, and even to per- 
form a voyage on his account, during which Fulton noted in a memo- 
randum-book the particulars of the construction and effect of the ma- 
chine, which Symington unhesitatingly afforded him. 



392 FULTON AND STEAM NAVIGATION. 

bottom of the river.* In 1807 he launched his first steam-vessel on 
the Hudson, and inaugurated a new era in river and ocean naviga- 
tion. The prejudices which rendered the multitude both of the wise 
and the ignorant skeptical before Fulton's ideas had been fully real- 
ized, and which drew them to the water-side to scoif at an expected 
failure, were destroyed in a few minutes by the steady motion of the 
vessel. Her fii'st trip was made on the Hudson, between New York 
and Albany, a distance of 150 miles. When we look back on that 
voyage, fraught with unspeakable benefits to mankind, how amusing 
is almost every thing connected with it ! The velocity of the steamer 
was only about five miles an hour ; yet so rapid did this rate seem to 
those on board, that the ships they passed, moving with themselves, 
appeared as if at anchor. The pine-wood used as fuel sent forth a 
column of ignited vapor many feet above the flue ; and so appalled 
were the crews of the ships on the Hudson as they saw this fiery mon- 
ster moving toward them in the darkness against both wind and tide, 
that some abandoned their ships, and others thought their last hour 
was come. Between 1807 and 1812, the year in which the Comet, the 
first British steamer, began to ply on the Clyde, steam-boats were in- 
troduced on almost aU the larger rivers of the tlnited States. — Edin- 
burgh Essays, 1856. 

During the war between Great Britain and the United States, in 
1814, Fulton proposed to defend the harbor of New York from attack 
by means of steam-frigates. That which he actually built, although 
it was not required, was pierced for thirty guns, and resembled the 
double-boats, or twins, constructed by Miller of Dalswinton. She was 
also fitted with machinery calculated to discharge an immense quan- 
tity of hot water through the port-holes of an enemy's ship, by which 
the ammunition would be rendered useless, and the crew scalded to 
death. Cutlasses without number were said to be moved by machin- 
ery; pikes, darted forth and withdrawn every quarter of a minute, 
would sweep the decks of our men-of-war ; in short, the iron fingers 
of a modern Scylla would kill the sailors at their post. Little did 
either nation imagine that, before the lapse of forty years, Great Brit- 
ain would depend on this very application of steam to maintain that 
supremacy at sea of which many supposed it had deprived her. 

Fulton also formed two projects for submarine navi- 
gation : one, a carcass or box filled with combustibles, 
which was to be propelled under water, and made to ex- 
plode beneath the bottom of a vessel ; the other, a sub- 
marine boat, to be used for a similar destructive purpose ; 
but for practical use both were failures. He appears, 
however, to have clung to the scheme with great perse- 

* To this discouraging accident Mr. Scott Russell attributes one of 
the excellences of the American steam-boats — the strong and light 
framing, by which, though slender, they are enabled to bear the 
weight and strain of their large and powerful engines. To remedy 
the evil, Fulton almost reconstructed his vessel, when her shattered 
hull was raised. 



bell's " comet" steamer. 393 

verance, and not long before his death exhibited its pow- 
er by blowing up an old A^essel in the neighborhood of 
N^ew York. Fulton's chest, which he named a Torpedo, 
or Nautilus, was, in his own words, "to blow a whole 
ship's company into the air ;" it Avas nothing more than 
a chest containing gunpowder, -U^hich, by means of clock 
machinery, might be ignited at a given time under wa- 
ter, and, being placed under a ship's bottom, destroy her 
by the explosion. This . application of gunpowder had 
before been made by Bushnell : it has been humorously 
described as " something like the scheme of children to 
catch swallows by applying salt to their tails." Fulton 
offered his invention to Bonaparte when First Consul, 
and he was sent to Brest under the promise of destroying 
the English blockading squadron ; but he did nothing. 
He then offered his scheme to the British ministry, and, 
by way of experiment, blew to pieces in two days an old 
Danish brig in Walmer Roads ; but his grand invention 
was the Catamaran expedition, as the trial of his ma- 
chines against the Boulogne flotilla was called. 

Fulton died in 1815 ; and so highly were his services 
appreciated in the United States, that, besides other test- 
imonials of respect, the members of both houses of the 
Legislature wore mourning on the occasion of his death. 

The practical application of Steam ISTavigation in Scot- 
land did not take place until a few years after Fulton's 
success in America, when Henry Bell, of Helensburg, on 
the Clyde, a house-carpenter, had built the Cornet^ 40 feet 
keel, 25 tons burden, and three-horse power : her boiler 
is in the possession of Mr. Scott Russell. Mr. Bennet 
Woodcroft, in comparing these boats with their prede- 
cessors, emphatically says : Symington's boat, the Char- 
lotte Dundas^ was altogether superior in its mechanical 
arrangements to either Fulton's Glennofit or Bell's Com- 
et^ as may be readily seen by inspection of the drawings. 
Next year, 1813, appeared the second steamer on the 
Clyde — the Elizabeth ; and in 1814 was built the In- 
dustry^ by Mr. Fyfe, of Fairlie : she is of wood, and her 
first engine was put on board by Duncan M'Arthur, of 
Glasgow. This vessel is now a luggage-steamer of the 
Clyde Shipping Company, and is stated to be the oldest 
steamer afloat, 

R 2 



394 EARLY STEAM VOYAGES. 

In Ireland, a person named Dawson states that he had 
built a steam-boat of 50 tons bm-den, worked by a high- 
pressm-e steam-engine, as early as 1811, which he also 
named the Cornet^ after the great phenomenon of that 
year. In 1813 Dawson established a steam-boat on the 
Thames, to ply between Gravesend and London, " which 
was the first that did so for public accommodation ; al- 
though Mr. Lawrence, of Bristol, who introduced a steam- 
boat on the Severn, soon after the successful operations 
on the Clyde, had her carried to London (through the 
canals) to ply on the Thames ; but, from the opposition 
of the watermen to the innovation, he was in the end 
obliged to take her to her first station." Mr. Cruden, 
in his History of Gravesend^ however, states the first 
Gravesend steam-boat to have been the Margery^ built 
upon the Clyde in 1813 by the builders of the Comet: 
she started for Gravesend in 1815. In the previous year, 
1814, a steamer began to ply between London and Rich- 
mond. 

George Dodd, whose history is a melancholy instance 
of the poverty which often attends the most ingenious in- 
ventors, was, it appears, the first to undertake a consider- 
able voyage by sea in a steam-vessel, built on the Clyde 
in 1813. She was 74 or 75 tons burden; 14 or 16 horse- 
power, with paddle-wheels 9 feet in diameter. Dodd 
brought her round to the Thames, by steam and sails, 
through rough weather, especially in the Irish Sea. 

The first ocean steam-voyage of great length was made 
by the Savannah^ of 350 tons, which arrived at Liver- 
pool July 15, 1819, having made the voyage from New 
York in 26 days. She then went to St. Petersburg, 
touching at Copenhagen, and subsequently recrossed the 
Atlantic. Steam was, however, employed only during a 
part of these voyages. 

The first steam voyage to India was made in the En- 
terprise^ which sailed from Falmouth Aug. 16, 1825 : for 
this feat the captain of the vessel received £10,000. 

In 1838, the Sirius^ of London, and the Great Westerji 
effected their first voyage to New York, almost simul- 
taneously, from Bristol; and from the same port the 
Great Britain^ propelled by a screw, made her first voy- 
age out in July, 1845, thus establishing the usefulness of 



EARLY STEAM VOYAGES. 395 

each mode of propulsion for the navigation of the ocean. 
Captain Ericsson appears to have accomplished for the 
screw propeller in America and England what Fulton 
did for the paddle-wheel i^i the former, and Bell in the 
latter country, namely, its practical introduction. To 
Francis Pettit Smith, the patentee of the Archimedean 
Screw Propeller, for the bringing into general use this 
system of propulsion, a magnificent plate testimonial and 
subscriptions, in the whole amounting to £2678, were 
presented at a festival in the summer of 1858, Mr. Rob- 
ert Stephenson, M.P., presiding. The screw is specially 
adapted for war-steamers : it leaves a clear broadside for 
the guns, does not prevent the use of sails, and allows 
the machinery to be placed six or eight feet below the 
water-line, thus leaving the upper decks free for working 
the guns. The screw was first tried in the Archimedes ; 
and in 1839 the first war-ship, the Rattler^ was fitted 
with it. 

The substitution of iron for wood in the building of 
steam-vessels insures their superior lightness and buoy- 
ancy, and has led to water-tight compartments and a 
multitude of other important changes. 



n 



SIE ISAMBAED M. BRUNEL: BLOCK MA- 
CHINEEY AND THE THAMES TUNNEL. 

The name of Brunei has now for two generations, 
from the commencement of this centmy to the present 
time, been identified with the progress and the applica- 
tion of mechanical and engineering science. 

The elder Brunei, Isambaed Mark, who displayed 
such diversity of genius for the minute and the vast, was 
born near Rouen in 1769, and from his earliest boyhood 
showed mechanical tastes. When sent to the seminary 
of St. Nicaise at Rouen, he preferred the study of the 
exact sciences, mathematics, mechanics, and navigation, 
t?> the classics, and loved to pass his holidays in a joiner's 
shop. At the age of twelve years he was proficient in 
turning, and in the construction of models of ships, ma- 
chines, and musical instruments ; he also made an octant, 
guided by the one belonging to his tutor and by a treat- 
ise on navigation; and at the age of fifteen he took such 
interest in astronomy as to observe the stars, greatly to 
the astonishment of the villagers. In 1786 he enlisted 
as a sailor, from which date up to 1793 he made several 
.voyages to the West Indies, in which he used instru- 
ments of his own construction : he also made a piano-forte 
while the ship once lay at Guadaloupe. 

Brunei's first engineering w^ork was a survey for the 
canal which now connects Lake Champlain with the River 
Hudson at Albany. He afterward acted as an architect, 
and built one of the theatres at New York. He was 
employed on the forts erected for the defense of that 
city, and in the establishment of an arsenal and foundery ; 
he also devised ingenious contrivances for boring cannon 
and moving large masses of metal with facility. He 
next visited England, where his first work was an auto- 
graphic machine for copying maps, drawings, and written 
documents. 

Brunei's next work was his invention and construction 
of the assemblage of machines in Portsmouth Dock-yard 



brunel's block machi:n^ery. 397 

for the formation of Blocks employed in raising burdens, 
and particularly in the important service of moving the 
rigging of ships. There are sixteen different machines, 
all driven by the same steam-engine : seven cut or shape 
logs of elm or ash into the shells of blocks, while nine 
fashion stems of lignum-vitse into pulleys or sheaves, and 
form the iron pin, which being inserted, the block is com- 
plete. Four men with this machine turn out as many 
blocks as fourscore did formerly, and at less cost ; and 
the supply has never failed, even though 1500 blocks are 
required in the rigging of a ship of the line. By adjust- 
ments, blocks can be manufactured of one hundred dif- 
ferent sizes : thirty men can make one hundred per hour ; 
and the machinery, by Maudslay, in twenty-five years re- 
quired no repairs. It cost £46,000 ; and the saving per 
annum, in time of war, has been £25,000. A second set 
of machinery was executed for the dock-yard at Chatham. 
This assemblage of machines contains so many ingenious 
processes for gaining the proposed ends with the utmost 
accuracy, and, at the same time, with the least possible 
labor, as to justify the opinion that it constitutes one of 
the noblest triumphs of mechanical skill. There is a set 
of magnificent models of this invention in the possession 
of the Navy Board : the machines work in succession, so 
as to begin and finish off a two-sheaved block, four inches ' 
in length, in the most perfect manner. A detailed ac- 
count of the entire machinery is given in the Penny Cy- 
clopoedia^ Supplement 1. 

Mr. Brunei next built in Chatham Dock-yard the Steam 
Saw-mill, in which he introduced Circular Saws, subse- 
quently improved for cutting veneers. He also invented 
a machine for making seamless shoes ; for nail-making ; 
for twisting, measuring, and forming sewing-cotton into 
hanks ; for ruling paper ; a contrivance for cutting and 
shufiling cards without the aid of fingers, produced in re- 
ply to a playful request of Lady Spencer ; a hydraulic 
packing-press ; new methods and combinations for sus- 
pension bridges ; and a process for building w^ide and 
flat arches without centrings. He was employed in the 
construction of the first Ramsgate steamer ; he was the 
first to suggest the advantage of steam-tugs to the Ad- 
miralty ; and for ten years he carried on experiments in 



398 THE THAMES TUNNEL. 

constructing a machine for using carbonic acid gas as a 
motive power. 

A popular writer of forty years since has left this graphic picture 
of his visit to Brunei's workshops at Battersea : ^ ' In a small building 
on the left, I was attracted by the solemn action of a steam-engine of 
sixteen-horse or eighty-men power, and was ushered into a room 
where it turned, by means of bands, four wheels fringed with fine 
saws, two of eighteen feet in diameter, and two of nine feet. These 

' circular saws were used for the purpose of separating veneers, and a 
more perfect operation was never performed. I beheld planks of ma- 
hogany and rosewood sawed into veneers the sixteenth of an inch 
thick, with a precision and grandeur of action which really was sub- 
lime. The same power at once turned these tremendous saws and 
drew their work from them. A large sheet of veneer, nine or ten feet 
long by two feet broad, was thus separated in about ten minutes, so 
even and so uniform that it appeared more like a perfect work of Na- 
ture than one of human art. The force of those saws may be con- 
ceived, when it is known that the large ones revolve sixty-five times 
in a minute ; hence 18 X 3 -14: =56 -5 X 65 gives 3672 feet, or two thirds 
of a mile, in a minute ; whereas, if a sawyer's tool gives thirty strokes 
of three feet in a minute, it is but ninety feet, or only the fortieth part 
of the steady force of Mr. Brunei's saws. 

** In another building I was shown his manufactory of shoes, which, 
like the other, is full of ingenuity, and, in regard to subdivision of 
labor, brings this fabric on a level with the oft-admired manufactory 
of pins. Every step in it is effected by the most elegant and precise 
machinery; while, as each operation is performed by one hand, so 
each shoe passes through twenty-five hands, who complete from the 
hide, as supplied by the currier, a hundred pairs of strong and weU- 

' finished shoes per day. All the details are performed by the ingenious 
application of the mechanic powers ; and all the parts are character- 
ized by precision, uniformity, and accuracy. As each man performs 
but one step in the process, which implies no knowledge of what is 
done by those who go before or follow him, so the persons employed 
are not shoemakers, but wounded soldiers, who are able to learn their 
respective duties in a few hours. The contract at which these shoes 
are delivered to government is 6s. 6d. per pair, being at least 25. less 
than what was paid previously for an unequal and cobbled article." — 
Sir Richard Phillips's Morning's Walk from London to Kew, 

Brunei is most popularly known by his great work of 
engineering construction — the Thames Tunnel, consisting 
of a brick-arched double roadway under the river, between 
Wapping and Rotherhithe. 

In 1799 an attempt was made to construct an archway 
under the Thames, from Gravesend to Tilbury, by Ralph 
Dodd, engineer; and in 1804 the "Thames Archway 
Company" commenced a similar work from Rotherhithe 
to Limehouse, under the direction of Vasey and Treve- 



THE THAMES TUNjS^EL. 399 

thick, two Cornish miners : the horizontal excavation had 
reached 1040 feet, when the ground broke in under the 
pressure of high tides, and the work was abandoned, 
fifty-four engineers declaring it to be impracticable to 
make a tunnel under the Thames of any useful size for 
commercial progression. 

In 1814, when the Allied Sovereigns visited London, 
Brunei submitted to the Emperor of Russia a plan for a 
Tunnel under the Neva, by which the terrors of the 
breaking up of the ice of that river in the spring would 
have been obviated. The scheme which he was not per- 
mitted to carry out at St. Petersburg he was destined to 
execute in London. 

It was planned in 1823. Among the earliest subscrib- 
ers to the scheme were the late Duke of Wellington and 
Dr. Wollaston ; and in 1824 the "Thames Tunnel Com- 
pany" was formed to execute the work. A brick-work 
cylinder, fifty feet in diameter, forty-two feet high, and 
three feet thick, was first commenced by Mr. Brunei, at 
150 feet from the Rotherhithe side of the river; and on 
March 2, 1825, a stone with a brass inscription-plate was 
laid in the brick-work. Upon this cylinder, computed to 
weigh 1000 tons, was set a powerful steam-engine, by 
which the earth was raised, and the water was drained 
from within it ; the shaft was then sunk into the ground 
en masse^ and completed to the depth of 65 feet, and at 
the depth of 63 feet the horizontal roadway was com- 
menced, with an excavation larger than the interior of 
the old House of Commons. The plan of operation had 
been suggested to Brunei in 1814 by the bore of the sea- 
worm Teredo navalis in the keel of a ship ; showing 
how, when the perforation was made by the worm, the 
sides were secured, and rendered impervious to water 
by the insect lining the passage with a calcareous secre- 
tion. With the auger-formed head of the worm in view, 
Brunei employed a cast-iron " Shield," containing thirty- 
six frames or cells, in each of which was a miner, who 
cut down the earth ; and a bricklayer simultaneously 
built up from the back of the cell the brick arch, which 
was pressed forward by strong screws. Thus were com- 
pleted, from Jan. 1, 1826, to April 27, 1827, 540 feet of 
the Tunnel. On May 1 8th the river burst into the works ; 



400 THE THAMES TUNNEL. 

but the opening was soon filled up with bags of clay, the 
water pumped out of the Tunnel, and the work resumed. 
At the length of 600 feet the river again broke in, and 
six men were drowned. 

The Tunnel was again emptied ; but the work was dis- 
continued for want of funds for seven years. Scores of 
plans were now proposed for its completion, and above 
;£5000 were raised by public subscription. By aid of a 
loan sanctioned by Parliament (mainly through the in- 
fluence of the Duke of Wellington), the work was re- 
sumed, and a new shield constructed, March, 1836, in 
which year were completed 117 feet; in 1837, only 29 
feet; in 1838, 80 feet; in 1839, 194 feet; in 1840 (two 
months), 76 feet; and by November, 1841, the remain- 
ing 60 feet, reaching to the shaft which had been sunk at 
Wapping. On March 24 Brunei was knighted by the 
queen ; on August 12 he passed through the Tunnel from 
shore to shore; and March 25, 1843, it was opened as a 
public thoroughfare. It is lighted with gas, and is open 
to passengers day and night, at one penny toll. 

The Tunnel has cost about £454,000 ; to complete 
the carriage-descents would require £180,000: total, 
£634,000. The dangers of the work were many; some- 
times portions of the shield broke with the noise of a 
cannon-shot ; then alarming cries told of some irruption 
of earth or water ; but the excavators were much more 
inconvenienced by fire than water, gas explosions fre- 
quently wrapping the place in a sheet of flame, strangely 
mingling with the water, and rendering the workmen in- 
sensible. Yet, w^ith all these perils, but seven lives were 
lost in constructing the Thames Tunnel, whereas nearly 
forty men were killed during the building of new Lon- 
don Bridge. In 1833, Mr. Brunei submitted to William 
IV., at St. James's Palace, " An Exposition of the Facts 
and Circumstances relating to the Tunnel." Brunei has 
also left a minute record of his great work : it is well de- 
scribed and illustrated in Weale's Quarterly Pa2>ers on 
Engineering, A fine medal was struck at the comple- 
tion of the work : obv, head of Brunei ; rev, interior and 
longitudinal section of the Tunnel. 

The width of the Tunnel is 35 feet ; height, 20 feet ; 
each archway and footpath, clear width, about 14 feet; 



THE THAMES-TUNNEL SHIELD. 



401 



thickness of earth between the crown of the arch and 
the bed of the river, about 15 feet. At full tide the 
floor of the tunnel is 75 
feet below the surface of 
the water. 

Sir Isambard Brunei died 
at his house in Duke Street, 
Westminster, in 1849, aged 
81. He left an only son, 
whose life and labors will 
be found recorded in a fu- 
ture sketch. 

We engrave a section of 
the Tunnel Shield. 



1. The Polling boards in front 
of the Shield. 

2. The Jack-screws. 

3. The Top Staves, securing 
the upper part of the excavation 
until the substitution of the brick- 
work : the sides of each division 
of the Shield were similarly de- 
fended. 

4. Screws, to raise or depress 
the top staves. 

5. The Legs, being Jack- 
screws, fixed by ball-joints to 
the Shoes, upon which the whole 
division stood. 

6. The Shoes. 

7 and 8. The Sockets, where 
the top and bottom horizontal 
screws were fixed to force the 
divisions forward as the work 
advanced. 




Section of the Thames-Tunnel Shield. 



GEOEGE STEPHENSON, THE EAILWAY 
ENGINEEE. 

I:n- this practical age of physical comfort, it is scarcely 
possible to overestimate the value and importance of the 
railway, and the services of its far-seeing originator, 
George Stephensois". " It is not too much to say that 
the inventor (to all practical purposes) of the locomotive 
steam-engine,* and the fomider of the railway system of 
the entire world, has done as much to promote human 
comfort and advantage as any single man that ever 
breathed ; and, more particularly, we believe that there 
is hardly a man, woman, or child in Britain who is not 
reaping personal profit from the labors of this great and 
sterhng Enghshman ; from the results of his wonderful 
ingenuity to devise, and his unparalleled perseverance in 
urging on his gigantic mvention, at a time when great 
engineers, eminent lawyers, and leading members of Par- 
liament were not ashamed to denounce him as an idiot, 
and to advise his consignment to Bedlam."f In every 
word of this honest tribute we heartily concur. 

At a few miles west of Newcastle, in the colliery vil- 
lage of Wylam, on the north bank of the Tyne, amid slag 
and cinders, there still stands a red-tiled ordinary cot- 
tage, of two stories, divided into four dwellings. In one 
of these rooms, which has unplastered walls, bare rafters, 
and floor of clay, George Stejohenson was born, on the 

* It is believed to have been first remarked by George Stephenson, 
that the original source of the power of heat engines is the sun, whose 
beams furnish the energy that enables vegetables to decompose car- 
bonic acid, and so to form a store of carbon, and of it combustible 
compounds, afterward used as fuel. The combination of that fuel 
with oxygen in furnaces produces the state of heat, which, being com- 
municated to some fluid, such as water, causes it to exert an aug- 
mented pressure, and occupy an increased volume ; and these changes 
are made available for the driving of mechanism. — Prof. Rankine's 
Manual of the Steam-engine, 1 859. 

t Saturday Revieiv, No. 87. 



BIRTHPLACE OF GEOEGE STEPHENSON. 403 

9th of June, 1781. At a few yards from the door is the 
line of rails which runs from the colliery toward New- 
castle, and has been put in place of the old ^ram-way,* 
along which the coal- wagons were formerly drawn by 
horses. Across the river the scenery is very beautiful, 
and the colliery appears in the distance ; and at the back 



Birthplace of George Stephenson, at Wylam. 

of the house, the rich land, partly clothed with wood, 
rises steeply toward Haddon-on-the-Wall. George's pa- 
rents, Robert and Mabel Stephenson, were " honest folk, 
but sair haudden doun in the world." His father was 
fireman of the pumping-engine of the colUery, and his 
mother was " a rale canny body." There were six chil- 
dren, of whom George was the second, and the family 
was maintained on the fireman's wages of twelve shil- 
lings a week ; food was so dear that neither of the chil- 
dren was sent to school, instead of which George was 
taken by his father bird-nesting, or told stories of Robin- 
son Crusoe, Sinbad the Sailor, etc. George's interest in 
birds'-nests never left him till his dying day, nor were 
other sights of his childhood less identified with the 
serious business of his life. In the rails of the wooden 
tram-road before his cottage, on which he saw the coal- 

* Called tram-Yo^ds from having been first laid down bv Outram, 
from whose name, omitting the first syllable, the word is said to have 
been derived. 



404 BOYHOOD OF GEORGE STEPHENSON. 

wagons dragged by horses from the pit to the landing- 
quay, half the destiny of an age was latent, to be evolved 
by the very boy who, after his own probation was over, 
had to keep his younger brothers and sisters out of the 
way of the horses. He himself was, however, so httle 
as to hide himself when the owner of the colliery came 
round, lest he should be thought unfit to earn his wages. 

When little " Geordie Stephie" was eight years old, his 
father removed to Dewley Burn, about four miles dis- 
tant ; and George, to his great joy, obtained the place of 
cowboy, at 2c7. a day. He spent much of his leisure in 
erecting Liliputian mills in the little streams that run 
into the Dewley Bog, and in making clay engines^ along 
with a certain Thomas Tholoway; the boys found the 
clay in the adjoining bog, and the hemlock which grew 
about supplied them with imaginary steam-pipes; and 
the villagers to this day point out, "just aboon the east 
end," where the future engineer made his first models. 

In due course, George had his wages doubled for hoe- 
ing turnips. He was next employed as " picker" or sorter 
of the coals. It was a proud day when he was advanced 
to be driver of the gin-horse at 8(i. ; " and there are those 
who still remember him in that capacity, as a ' grit bare- 
legged laddie,' whom they describe as full of tricks and 
fun." George was promoted to the post of assistant 
fireman when only fourteen years of age, at I5. a day. 
At the colliery at Throckley Bridge he was advanced to 
125. a week, and at seventeen he became an engineman 
or plugman, while his father continued to stoke the fire; 
and on receiving his first week's wages, he said exulting- 
ly to a companion, " I am now a made man for life." At 
this time he was a big, raw-boned man, fond of displaying 
his strength and activity at the village feasts, but re- 
markable for his temperance, sobriety, industry, and good 
temper. He soon studied and mastered the working of 
his engine, which become a sort of pet with him. He 
delighted to find some one who could read to him by the 
engine-fire out of any book or stray newspaper; and 
having heard that the Egyptians hatched birds' eggs by 
artificial heat, he endeavored to do the same in his en- 
gine-house. He learned also that the wonderful engines 
of Watt and Boulton were to be found described in 



HIS PEOGRESS. 405 

books, which induced him to attend a night-school at 3(?. 
a week, to learn his letters and practice " pot-hooks," so 
that at eighteen he had learned to read, and at nineteen 
he was proud to be able to write his own name. He next 
went to the night-school of a Scotch domine, a skilled 
arithmetician, and there learned " figuring" much faster 
than his schoolfellows : he worked out his sums by the 
engine fire, and solved the arithmetical questions set him 
upon his slate by his master, so that he soon became well 
advanced in arithmetic. In 1801 he became brakesman 
at the colliery ; and he began to increase his income by 
mending the workmen's shoes. He went on w^ith his 
writing lessons; and by the next year, 1802, when he 
married a respectable young woman, Fanny Henderson, 
he signed his name in a good legible round-hand. 

He now took up his abode in a humble cottage at Wil- 
lington Quay, near ^Newcastle. He occupied his leisure 
in constructing little machines, and attempting to dis- 
cover the perpetual motion. He soon advanced from 
mending shoes to making them ; and an accident having 
obliged him to repair his own clock, he became the. gen- 
eral clock cleaner and mender for the neighborhood, thus 
improving his own mechanical skill w^hile adding to his 
income. At Willington, he made the first self-acting in- 
cline used in that district, by which the descending laden 
wagons on the tram-road were made to draw up the 
empty wagons. Here, on the 16th of November, 1803, 
was born his only son, Robert, who became second only 
to his father as a railway engineer. George Stephenson 
now became something more than a mere workman, by 
studying the principles of mechanism and the laws by 
which his engine worked. By steady conduct and sav- 
ing habits, he procured the coveted means of educating 
his son, who, in after years, when he had risen to the 
highest scientific eminence, declared, with touching grati- 
tude, "however extensive his own connection with rail- 
ways, all he had known, and all he had himself done, 
was due to the parent whose memory he cherished and 
revered." 

In 1804, George Stephenson removed to Killingworth 
Colliery, seven miles north of Newcastle ; while there, 
his poor wife died. He spent the next year at a col- 



406 THE FIRST RAILS. 

liery near Montrose, in Scotland ; and on his return, he 
found his aged father had been accidentally scalded and 
blinded by a discharge of steam, let in upon him while 
repairing an engine. He at once devoted all his savings 
to relieve the old man's distress, and place him in com- 
parative comfort. So disheartened was Stephenson about 
this period, that he thought of emigrating to Canada. 
But his prospects brightened, through his perseverance 
in the colhery work, and by mending clocks and shoes, 
and even cutting out the clothes of the workmen. He 
also signalized himself by curing a wheezy engine, at 
wliich all the engineers of the neighborhood had failed : 
he got £10 for this job ; from this day his services as an 
engineer came into request ; and a vacancy occurring, he 
was appointed the engine- wright to the colliery, with a 
hundred pounds a year. He now began to turn his 
thoughts to the locomotive steam-engine. 

Railways, consisting of wooden beams, tram, or wagon 
Avays, were introduced as early as 1602 in the collieries 
in the north of England, to reduce the labor of drawing 
coals from the pits to the place of shipment. Lord-keeper 
[N'orth, in 1676, describes such rails of timber from the 
colliery to the river, exactly straight and parallel, with 
the rollers of bulky carts made to fit the rails. This 
" oaken way" first consisted of pieces of wood simply 
imbedded in the ordinary road. A century and a half 
elapsed before the rails were laid upon cross-pieces, or 
sleepers, to which they were fastened by pegs. In 1716, 
thin plates of malleable iron were nailed upon portions 
of the wooden rails. Next followed cast-iron rails. A 
wooden railway was used at the Coalbrookdale Iron- 
works about 1767, when, the price of iron becoming very 
low, it was determined, in order to keep the furnaces at 
work, to cast bars, which might be laid down upon the 
wooden rails to save their wear, but which it was pro- 
posed to take up, and sell as pigs of iron, in case of a 
sudden rise. This is confirmed by an entry in the Com- 
pany's books of between five and six tons of cast-iron 
rails, but " only as an experiment, on the suggestion of 
one of the partners." A few years after, cast-iron rails, 
with an upright flange, were first used at the colliery of 
the Duke of Norfolk, near Sheffield, in 1776. Here we 
must leave the Railwav for the Locomotive. 



THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE. 407 

Various kinds of propelling power had been proposed 
for use on these plate-ways^ as they were still called. 
Sails had their advocate. The application of the steam- 
engine to locomotion on land was, according to Watt, 
suggested by Robison in 1759. In 1784, Watt patented 
a locomotive engine, which, however, he never executed; 
and about the same time, Murdoch, assistant to Watt, 
made a very efficient model. In 1802, Trevethick and 
Vivian patented a locomotive engine, which, in 1804 or 
1805, traveled at about five miles an hour, with a net 
load of ten tons. The use of fixed engines, to drag trains 
on railways by ropes, was introduced by Cook in 1808. 
Some years after, Mr.Blackett constructed an engine for 
the Wylam Colliery; but as it would only travel one 
mile an hour, it was soon laid aside. 

Several other " traveling engines" were made by other 
engineers, with partial success ; but it was left to Stephen- 
son to render the locomotive practically useful. He 
pressed the matter on the lessees of the Killingworth col- 
liery, and he made for them a locomotive, which was first 
tried on their railway July 25, 1814 : it was very clumsy 
and ugly, but it drew thirty tons at four miles an hour. 
Some improvements were made in this engine, and next 
year Stephenson built a locomotive which contained the 
germ of all that has since been efiected ; '' there being 
no material difierence between the cumbrous machines 
that screamed and jolted along the coal tram-road in 
1815, and the elegant and noiseless locomotive which 
now takes out the express train, gliding smoothly and 
swiftly as a bird through the air." 

The engines which Stephenson constructed in 1815 
worked away at Killingworth, but attracted little notice : 
their p^uthor always maintained that some day such en- 
f/ines and railways loould he loell hnown all over Britain, 
but he was regarded as an innocent enthusiast. 

Meanwhile, a striking suggestion of uniting railway 
communication into a system^ as connecting lines are 
now called, was made by an unprofessional writer, the 
first author on the subject to notice which was Mr. 
Smiles, in his admirable Life of George Stephenson. 

This suggestion occurs in Sir Richard Phillips's Morning's Walk 
from London to Kew^ and was written in 1813. On reaching the 



408 THE RAILWAY SYSTEM SUGGESTED. 

Surrey Iron Railway, at Wandsworth, where a train of carriages was 
drawn by one horse, Sir Richard says, "I thought of the millions 
which have been spent at Malta, four or five of which might have 
been the means of extending double lines of iron railway from London 
to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Holyhead, Milford, Falmouth, Yarmouth, 
Dover, and Portsmouth. A reward of a single thousand would have 
supplied coaches, and other vehicles, of various degrees of speed, with 
the best tackle for readily turning out ; and we might, ere this, have 
witnessed our mail-coaches running at the rate of ten miles an hour, 
drawn by a single horse, or impelled fifteen miles an hour hy BlenTcin- 
sop'e steam-engine.''^ The writer of these sagacious remarks lived 
until 184:0, so that he had witnessed a triumph greater than his long- 
cherished hope. 

In the interval, ^. e., in 1825, Sir Richard Phillips pub- 
lished the first Treatise on Haihcays^ by Nicholas Wood, 
of Killingworth, wherein he deprecates any attempt at 
a greater speed than fourteen miles an hour upon rail- 
ways. Yet this short-sightedness was exceeded by a 
writer in the Quarterly JRevieic : 

What (said the reviewer) can be more palpably ridiculous than the 
prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stage- 
coaches ! We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer 
themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets, as 
trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine going at such a rate. 
We will back old Father Thames against the Woolwich Railway for 
any sum. We trust that Parliament will, in all railways it may sanc- 
tion, limit the speed to eight or nine miles an hour, which we entirely 
agree with Mr. Sylvester is as great as can be ventured on with safety. 

In 1819, Stej^henson turned, for the owners of Hetton 
Colliery, their tram-road into a railway ; and, taking ad- 
vantage of the hilly country, formed self-acting inclines, 
the locomotive working on the level part : this line was 
opened in 1822. 

In 1819, also, Mr. Edward Pease, supported by a num- 
ber of Quaker friends, obtained, after much opposition, 
an Act of Parliament for the construction of a colliery 
railway from Stockton to Darlington. In 1821, George 
Stephenson applied to Mr. Pease to lay out the line. 
The wealthy Quaker was prepossessed in favor of 
Stephenson, "there was such an honest, sensible look 
about him, and he seemed so modest and unpretending." 
Mr. Pease had contemplated the use of horse-power 
upon his railway ; but Stephenson assured him that the 
engine Avhich had worked for years at Killingworth was 



THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER RAILWAY. 409 

worth fifty horses, pe went and saw the engine, and 
George Stephenson was appointed engineer to the Stock- 
. ton and Darhngton Railway, with a salary of £300 a 
year ; and he removed to Darlington with his family (he 
had married a second time in 1819) in the year 1823. 
He laid out every foot of the line ; and he built, in a 
factory at Newcastle, three engines for use upon it, with 
£1000 given him by public subscription for his invention 
of a safety-lamp for use in coal-pits. The railway was 
opened September, 1825, when the first train, 38 car- 
riages, with 600 passengers, was drawn by a single en- 
gine at from four to twelve miles an hour, the first pas- 
senger carriage being an old stage coach placed upon a 
wooden frame. The engines did their daily work admi- 
rably ; and the little factory at Newcastle, founded mainly 
to bring together more skillful workmen than the country 
blacksmiths who had made the first locomotives, gradual- 
ly grew into a gigantic establishment, which for many 
years supphed engines, drivers, and superintendents for 
all the railways of Europe. 

The No. 1 engine made by Stephenson for the above 
railway, and which was the first machine ever run on a 
Parliamentary line, has been preserved, and was, in 1859, 
erected upon a pedestal at Darlington, as a public memo- 
rial of the commencement of the railway system ; and it 
is a far more interesting object than the groups of monu- 
mental flattery which we are accustomed to see in public 
places. 

The grand railway experiment of a line between Liver- 
pool and Manchester was now commenced. It met with 
great opposition, especially from the authorities of the 
JBridgewater Canal. Nevertheless, a company was form- 
ed, and all the shares in it were immediately taken up. 
A line of railway was surveyed and mapped out, in spite 
of the furious resistance of land-owners ; personal vio- 
lence was threatened to the engineers employed, and the 
most absurd stories Avere circulated as to the dangerous 
nuisances to be apprehended from the passing engines. 
The best friends of the locomotive engine lamented that 
Stephenson should venture to predict that railway-trains 
would some day run at twelve and sixteen miles an hour ; 
and members of the Parliamentary Committee whispered 



410 THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER RAILWAY. 

doubts of the engineer's sanity. The Bill was thrown 
out by a majority of one; but earfy in the next session, 
1826, an act was passed authorizing the construction of 
the railway, and Mr. Stephenson was appointed engineer, 
with a salary of £1000 a year. He set to work at once, 
and in June, 1826, began to make the road across Chat 
Moss, the great morass of four miles. Week after week, 
thousands of cubic yards were ingulfed, without the least 
apparent progress. At length the directors proposed to 
abandon it; but Stephenson persevered, and the four 
miles through Chat Moss now form the soundest part of 
the line. The expense was about £28,000, whereas an 
engineer had declared before Parliament that the cost 
must be at least £270,000. Stephenson organized all 
the works himself, there being then neither contractors 
nor navvies : he sent for his son Robert, who had been 
some years in America, for his aid and counsel in the 
great work. 

The Railway had almost been completed before the 
motive-power to be employed on it was decided on. 
Stephenson stood alone in urgmg the directors to em- 
ploy the locomotive; but other engineers who were 
consulted, without exception, recommended stationary 
engines, which should draw the trains by the help of 
ropes. Stephenson expostulated and entreated, and at 
length worried the directors into giving the locomotive 
a fair trial. A simple remark, made by him about this 
time, shows with what vivid reality the future passage- 
railway was present to his mind : " I said to my friends 
that there was no limit to the speed of such an engine, 
provided the works could be made to standi He had 
already, by his invention of the tubular boiler (in con- 
junction with his son), raised the speed of the engine 
from seven to thirty miles an hour. 

A large heating surface is indispensable to generate the steam re- 
quired ; but the space allowed for the whole engine on the carriage 
being limited, Stephenson's ingenuity was exercised in providing the 
former without unduly increasing the latter. The flame and heated 
air leave the fire-box at a very high temperature, and much heat 
would be wasted if they were allowed to escape immediately into the 
atmosphere ; but Stephenson had already supplemented the ordinary 
operation of the furnace by this heated air. As high-pressure engines 
are used, the steam escapes from the cylinder, after having done its 



THE ''KOCKET' PEIZE ENGINE. 



411 



work, at a high temperature ; and being made to pass into the smoke- 
box, and then up the chimney, it acts as a powerful blast upon the fire. 
Instead of blowing the fire, it blows the chimney ; and more air will, 
of course, enter the fire if the chimney be cleared more quickly. This, 
then, was Stej)henson's great improvement, and it enabled him to give 
effect to another. Putting the chimney at one end of the boiler, and 
the fire-box at the other, he connected the two by a number of metal 
tubes passing from the back of the furnace to the smoke-box. Hot 
air escaping through these tubes heats the water by which they are 
surrounded, and enables engines to travel at the rate of twenty, sixty, 
or even seventy miles an hour. — James Sime, M.A. ; Edinburgh Es- 
says, 1856. 

Stephenson prepared an engine {thelioclcet)^ construct- 
ed on this principle, to contend for the prize of £500 
which the Railway Directors offered for the best engine, 
to be produced on a certain day, to draw a weight of 
twenty tons at ten miles an hour. The trial took place 
on October 6, 1829, at Rainhill. There were four en- 
gines, but Stephenson's Rocket won the prize : it drew 
thirteen tons at a maximum speed of twenty-nine miles 
an hour, and thus decided for ever the use of locomotive 
engines on railways. 




The Rocket prize Locomotive Engine. 



The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Rail- 
way took place on the 15th of September, 1830. The 
Duke of Wellington, then prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, 



412 THE "kOCKEt" PKIZE ENGINE. 

and other distinguished persons, were present ; but the 
sad death of Mr.'Husldsson, who fell beneath the train in 
motion, threw a gloom upon the day. Little passenger- 
traffic had been looked for ; but, from the opening, the 
railway carried about 1200 passengers daily, and in five 
years afterward it carried half a million yearly. Stephen- 
son's predicted ten miles rose to thirty miles an hour, 
and the net profit of the company exceeded £80,000 a 
year. The BocJcet often attained a speed of sixty miles 
an hour ; it weighed four and a quarter tons : the loco- 
motive of the present day ranges from five to fifty tons 
weight, and its load from fifty to five hundred tons. 

What has become of the BocJcet engine ? The French 
preserve with the greatest care the locomotive construct- 
ed by Cugnot, which is to this day to be seen in the Con- 
servatoire des Arts at Paris. The BocJcet has scarcely 
been so honored. 

*' Changing hands, says Professor G. Wilson, *' more than once, and 
at length discarded, like an old horse as soon as it is unfit for work, it 
was finally purchased by the inventor's son, and is now preserved in 
the engine- works at Newcastle- on-Tyne. It can not always continue 
under filial guardianship ; yet, when we consider that a century hence 
liundreds of curious pilgrims will gladly travel from distant lands to 
study the famous Rocket engine, if it be in existence to be studied, we 
can not but hope that at least it will not be willfully destroyed. We 
may have a thousand better engines, but we can never have the Rocket 
again. As the first of its race, the most infantile and the most ven- 
erable of engines, it has merits which no later engine can possibly 
possess." 

From 1830 railways began to overspread England. In 
conjunction with his son, Stephenson was appointed the 
engineer of the London and Birmingham, the Grand 
Junction, the Midland and the North Midland, and other 
important lines. In 1840 he settled at Tapton House, 
near Chesterfield. His pupils became eminent engineers, 
among whom were Locke and Gooch, Swanwick and 
Birkenshaw. To his honor be it said, that Stephenson 
held aloof from all the schemes of the railway mania of 
1845-6, and he strongly condemned the reckless spirit in 
which Parliament authorized lines which could not pos- 
sibly remunerate the shareholders. In 1845 he visited 
Spain to survey a proposed line of railway, having pre- 
viously laid out the government system of railways in 



HONORS TO GEORGE STEPHEXSOX. 413 

Belgium, for which he received a knighthood from King 
Leopold. He also constructed lines in Holland, France, 
Germany, and Italy. Stephenson's declining years were 
spent at Tapton, where he became an enthusiastic horti- 
culturist, and began working the Claycross Collieries. 
He took great interest in the Mechanics' Institute in his 
neighborhood ; and he w^as the founder and president of 
the Institution of Mechanical Engineers of Birmingham. 
His early fondness for all kinds of animals revived. He 
had many attached pets among his dogs, horses, and 
birds ; and he was fond of rambling about the neighbor- 
ing country, bird-nesting or nutting. Unfortunately, he 
spent too much time in the unwholesome air of his forcing- 
houses at Tapton, and he contracted an intermittent fever, 
which carried him off after a few days' illness, on the 18th 
of August, 1848, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. 
The shops of Chesterfied were closed, and all business 
was suspended, on the day of his funeral. A plain monu- 
ment in Chesterfield Church marks his resting-place. 

In 1844 a fine statue of Stephenson was erected in St. 
George's Hall, Liverpool, and in 1854 there was set up 
in the great hall of the terminus of the Northwestern 
Railway, London, Baily's colossal marble statue of Ste- 
phenson, purchased by the subscriptions of 3150 work- 
ing-men and 178 private friends. 

The genius and worth of George Stephenson are to be commemo- 
vated by a characteristic group of sculpture, to be erected at New- 
castle-on-Tyne. It is to consist of a colossal statue of Stephenson 
upon an embellished pedestal. The model was completed by Mr. 
Lough, the sculptor, in the autumn of 1859. The height of the figure 
is seven feet eight inches, but the actual casting model will measure 
ten feet high. The figure is upright, and attired in modern costume, 
with a plaid crossing the chest from the left shoulder ; the right hand, 
holding a pair of callipers, rests on the breast, and the left on a loco- 
motive engine of very early form. The likeness is good, and the head 
is profoundly thoughtful. The pedestal intended for the support of 
this statue presents at its four angles types of the labor necessary to 
engineering works; these are accordingly a navvy, a blacksmith, a 
pitman, and an engineer. 

There are countries where such a man would have been ennobled, 
and covered with ribbons and orders ; here he died as he had lived, 
plain George Stephenson. But he has a most noble memorial in the 
great system of iron roads which converge to Britain's great cities, 
and /ire ramified away to her quietest country nooks. 



BOBEET STEPHENSON AND RAILWAY 

WORKS. 

This distinguished son of a distinguished father, George 
Stephenson, was born at Willing! on Quay, on the Tyne, 
about six miles below Newcastle, on November 16, 1803. 
Here, in his hmnble home, he was familiarized from his 
earliest years with the steady industry of his parents ; 
for, when his father was not busy in shoemaking, or cut- 
ting out shoe-lasts, or cleaning clocks, or making clothes 
for the pitmen, he was occupied with some drawing or 
model, with which he sought to improve himself. Rob- 
ert's mother very soon died ; and his father, whose heart 
was bound up in the boy, had to take the sole charge of 
him. George Stephenson felt deeply his ow^n want of 
education, and, in order that his son might not suffer 
from the same cause, sent him first to a school at Long 
Benton, and afterward to the school of a Mr. Bruce, in 
Newcastle, one of the best seminaries of the district. 
There young Robert remained for three years ; and his 
father not only encouraged him to study for himself, but 
also made him, in a measure, the instrument of his own 
better education, by getting the lad to read for him at 
the library in Newcastle, and bring home the results of 
his weekly acquirements, as well as frequently a scien- 
tific book, which father and son studied together. They 
jointly produced a sun-dial, which was placed in the 
wall over the door of their cottage at Killingworth, and 
of which the father was always proud. On leaving 
school at the age of fifteen, Robert Stephenson was ap- 
prenticed to Mr. Nicholas Wood, at Killingworth, to 
learn the business of the colliery, where he served for 
three years, and became familiar with all the depart- 
ments of underground work. His father was engaged 
at the same colliery, and the evenings of both were usu- 
ally devoted to their mutual improvement. Mr. Smiles 
describes the animated discussions which in this Vay 




Geokge Stephenson. 



Robert Stephenson. 




SiE I M. Bkunel. 



I. K. Brunei-. 



kobert's education. 417 

took place in their humble cottage, these discussions 
frequently turning on the then comparatively unknown 
powers of the locomotive engine daily at work on the 
wagon- way. The son was even more enthusiastic than 
the father on the subject. It was probably out of these 
discussions that there arose in George Stephenson's mind 
the desire to give Robert a still better education. He 
sent him in the year 1820 to the Edinburgh University, 
where Dr. Hope was lecturing on chemistry. Sir John 
Leslie on natural philosophy, and Professor Jameson on 
natural history. Though young Stephenson remained in 
Edinburgh but six months, it is supposed that he did as 
much work in that time as most students do in a three 
years' course. It cost his father some £80 ; but the 
money was not grudged when the son returned to Kil- 
lingworth, in the summer of 1821, bringing with him the 
prize for mathematics, which he had gained at the Uni- 
versity. 

In 1822 Robert Stephenson was apprenticed to his fa- 
ther, who had by this time established his locomotive 
manufactory at Newcastle; but his health giving way 
after a couple of years' exertion, he accepted a commis- 
sion to examine the gold and silver mines of South 
America. The change of air and scene contributed to 
the restoration of his .health; and, after having founded 
the Silver Mining Company of Columbia, he returned to 
England in December, 1827, in time to assist his father 
in the arrangements of the Liverpool and Manchester 
Railway by placing himself at the head of the factory at 
Newcastle. About this time, indeed, he seems to have 
almost exclusively devoted his attention to the study of 
the locomotive engine, the working of which he explain- 
ed, jointly with Mr. Locke, in a report replying to that of 
Messrs. Walker and Rastrick, who advocated stationary 
engines. How well he succeeded in carrying out the 
idea of his father was afterward seen, when he obtained 
the prize of £500 offered by the directors of the Liver- 
pool and Manchester Railway for the best locomotive. 
He himself gave the entire credit of the invention to his 
fether and Mr. Booth, although it is beUeved that the 
Rochet^ which was the designation of the prize-winning 
engine, was entered in the name of Robert Stephenson. 

S2 



418 THE "planet' engine. 

Even this locomotive, however, was far from perfect, and 
was not destined to be the future model. The yoimg 
engineer saw where the machine was defective, and de- 
signed the Planet^ which, with its multitubular boiler, 
with cylinders in the smoke-box, with its cranked axle- 
tree, and with its external frame-work, forms, in spite of 
some modifications, the type of the locomotive engines 
employed up to the present day. About the same time 
he designed for the United States an engine specially 
adapted to the curves of American railways, and named 
it the Bogie^ after a kind of low wagon used on the quay 
at Newcastle. To Robert Stephenson we are according- 
ly indebted for the type of the locomotive engines used 
in both hemispheres. 

The next great work upon which Mr. Stephenson was 
engaged was the survey and construction of the London 
and Birmingham Railway, which he undertook in 1833, 
having already been employed in the execution of a 
branch from the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and 
in the construction of the Leicester and Swannington 
line. The London and Birmingham line was completed 
in four years, and on the 15th of September, 1838, was 
opened. The difficulties of this vast undertaking were 
very formidable. In forming the Kilsby Tunnel, it was 
ascertained that about 200 yards from the south end 
there existed, overlaid by a bed of clay 40 feet thick, a 
quicksand. The contractor for the works is said to have 
died of fright in consequence of this discovery ; and the 
danger was so imminent, that the tunnel would have 
been abandoned altogether but for the landholders in the 
vicinity of the line. Under these circumstances, Robert 
Stephenson accepted the responsibility of proceeding, 
and in the end conquered every difficulty. He worked 
with amazing energy, walking the whole distance between 
London and Birmingham more than twenty times in the 
course of his superintendence. Meanwhile, he had not 
ceased to devote his attention to the manufactory in 
jN^ewcastle, convinced that good locomotives are the first 
step to rapid transit. His evidence before Parliamentary 
Committees was grasped at ; and it may be said that, in 
one way or another, he became engaged on all the rail- 
ways in England, while, in conjunction with his father. 



ROBERT STEPHENSON S TUBULAR BRIDGES. 419 

lie directed the execution of more than a third of the 
various lines in the country. Father and son were con- 
sulted as to the Belgian system of railways, and obtained 
from King Leopold the Cross of the Order of Leopold in 
1844. For similar services performed in Norway, which 
he visited in 1846, Robert Stephenson received the Grand 
Cross of St. Olof So, also, he assisted either in actually 
making or in laying out the systems of lines in Switzer- 
land, in Germany, in Denmark, in Tuscany, in Canada, in 
Egypt, and in India. As the champion of locomotive in 
opposition to stationary engines, he resisted to the utmost 
the atmospheric railway system, which was backed with 
the authority of Brunei, but it is now nearly forgotten. 
In like manner, he had to fight with Mr. Brunei the bat- 
tle of the gauges, the narrow against the broad gauge, 
and he was successful also here. 

It is, however, in the Bridges which Robert Stephen- 
son erected for railway purposes that his genius as an 
engineer is most strikingly displayed, and by these he 
will be best remembered. Of his bridges, w^e refer to 
the high-level one at ISTewcastle, constructed of wood and 
iron ; to the Victoria Bridge at Berwick, built of stone 
and brick ; to the bridge in wrought and cast iron across 
the Nile ; to the Conway and the Britannia Bridges over 
the Menai Straits ; and to the Victoria Bridge over the 
St. Lawrence. The High-level Bridge, in which the 
suspension and ordinary principles of a viaduct have been 
combined in one structure, serves a two-fold object — a 
bridge to accommodate Newcastle and Gateshead at the 
same time that it carries the railway-lines above. 

The idea of the Tubular Bridge was an utter novelty, and as carried 
out was a grand achievement. When, in 1844, Mr. Robert Stephen- 
son undertook to construct a railway between Chester and Holyhead, 
it was necessary to cross the Menai Straits from the main land to 
Holyhead at such a height as to allow great ships to pass beneath it. 
The Commissioners of the Admiralty would not consent to cast-iron 
arches, and tlie principle of a suspension bridge was inadmissible. Mr. 
Stephenson then proposed to span the strait by a tunnel of wrought 
iron, stretching from side to side, and allowing a passage for trains 
through its interior. The question then arose, Should the tubular 
bridge be supported by chains, or left to itself? what should be the 
form of the tube — elliptical, circular, or rectangular ? where was the 
most strength required? where least? and how could the greatest 
strength be secured with the least expenditure of materials? These 



4:20 RAILWAY TrBL-LAR BRIDGES. 

points were detennined bv careful experiments by Mr. Stephenson, 
assisted bv 3Ir. Fairbaim, the eminent engineer: and the result was, 
it was seriously proposed to build an iron box. 4:60 feet long. 30 feet 
high, and I-t feet broad, on the banks of the Menai Straits ; to float 
this mass of 1450 tons at high water to openings in piers prepared for 
its reception : to lift it upward of 100 feet, and build solid masonry 
underneath for its support : to rest it at its utmost height on cast-iron 
rollers, which would allow it to expand and contract as the sun rose 
and set, or as summer advanced and waned ; then to make it a tnnnel 
for the passage of railway trains weighing, perhaps, a hundred tons. 
Experiments made ^Ir. Fairbaim confident that there was no dan- 
ger of the bridge giving way under its own weight ; and numerous 
experiments upon a large scale proved the truth of his opinion. 
Chains were as unnecessary to support this bridge as intermediate 
piers, even if the latter could have been built. Its strength is derived 
from a different source from either. The roof consists of two plat- 
forms. 1 foot 9 inches apart, and 14 feet broad : this space is divided 
into eight equal parts by partitions running from end to end of the 
bridge, and the cells thus formed keep the tube from giving way to 
compression in the top, where the material is most liable to be injured. 

Two of these stupendous bridges were constructed for the Chester 
and Holyhead line. The first was built on the banks of the Conway 
River in 1 S4S, and now spans that stream nor far from the suspension 
bridge erected by Tehbrd on the Holyhead road about twenty years 
earlier. Two tubes of 400 feet span were required, one for each line 
of rails. A train of wagons, weighing altogether 301 tons, was placed 
in the middle of one of them, and the deflection in the centre amount- 
ed to 11 inches. The rollers on which the bridge rests allow the tubes 
to expand or contract with the ever-yaiying temperature erf" the day 
or season. 

The Britannia Bridge over the Menai Straits (at about a mile dis- 
tant from Telford's suspension bridge) was finished a year after, and 
is justly regarded as the greatest triumph of engineering skill that this 
or any other country has ever witnessed. A splendid tower rises to 
the height of 250 feet from a rock in the middle of the Straits ; and 
four tubes, each 472 feet in length, stretch from it to smaller towers 
on the banks. Other four tubes, of 260 feet each, carry the railway 
to the high grounds on the east and west sides of the Straits, This 
magnificent bridge was the culminating point of railway enterprise 
and engineering, and half a century may elapse betore necessity pro- 
duces its rival — James Seme, M.A.; Edinburgh Essays, 1S56.' 

The construction of this bridge was a vast labor. Any 
midway support was limited to a small area of the cen- 
tral rock; scaffolding below was impracticable, and the 
navigation was under no circiunstances to be interfered 
with. To meet these requirements, the tubes were con- 
structed upon the beach, and lioated upon rapid tides; 
and, although weighing nearly 2000 tons each, were 
ultimately lifted by vast hydraulic presses into their 



THE BRITAXNIA EKIDGE. 421 

place, to bear Mr. Stephenson's name with honor to 
posterity. Each of the tubes has been compared to a 
row of chimneyless houses, and, allowing it to have sky- 
lights in the roof, it would resemble the Burlington Ar- 
cade in Piccadilly ; and the labor of placing each tube 
upon the piers has been likened to that of raising Bur- 
lington Arcade to the summit of the spire of St. James's 
Church, if surrounded with water. One of the tubes, if 
placed on its end in St. Paul's Church-yard, would reach 
107 feet higher than the cross of the Cathedral.* The 
masonry is Cyclopean. Mr. Stephenson tells us that no 
less than a million and a half of cubic feet, of which the 
piers and abutments are composed, were constructed 
within three years ; and three cubic feet were accom- 
plished per minute from the commencement. 

Over the entrances to the tubes are massive lintels, consisting of 
single stones twenty feet long ; and the approaches are marked by co- 
lossal lions couchant on pedestals, designed by Mr. John Thomas, and 
each composed of eleven pieces of limestone : they are each twenty- 
five feet long, twelve feet high, and weigh about thirty tons ; and one 
of these lions was brought from a workshop at the base of the abut- 
ment, raised 100 feet, and put together complete on the pedestal in a 
single day. 

The Britannia Tower is 221 feet 3 inches high ; it contains 151,158 
tubic feet of Anglesea limestone, 127,001 cubic feet of Runcorn sand- 
stone, and 68,411 cubic feet of brick-work, in ail weighing 24,700 
tons. Including the bed-plates, it contains also 479 tons of cast-iron, 
and the weight from the two tubes is 4000 tons. The total weight 
at the foundations is thus 29,600 tons, or 16 tons per superficial foot 
of sectional area ; whereas the weight required to crush the lower 
courses would be about 500 tons per superficial foot. 

The security which Mr. Stephenson deemed it neces- 
sary to insure for the public in this wonderful structure 
may be illustrated by the following very extraordinary 
fact. It had been mathematically demonstrated, as well 
as practically proved by Mr. Fairbairn, that the strain 
which would be inflicted on the iron-work of the longest 
of Mr. Stephenson's aerial galleries, by a monster railway- 
train sufficient to cover it from end to end, would amount 
to six tons per square inch, which is exactly equal to the 
constant stress upon the chains of Telford's Menai Bridge 
when it has nothing to support but its own apparently 
slender weight. 

The two tubular bridges constructed by Mr. Stephen- 



422 VICTORIA BRIDGE, CANADA. 

son on the Egyptian railway are, one over the Damietta 
branch of the Nile, and the other over the large canal 
near Beaket-al-Saba ; they have this peculiarity, that the 
trains run, not, as at the Menai Straits, withm the tube, 
but at the outside, upon the top. 

Although the Britannia Bridge represented the most 
scientific distribution of material which could be devised 
at the date of its construction, it has since been improved 
upon^by the same engineer in the Victoria Bridge now 
in the course of construction across the river St. Law- 
rence, near Montreal. The Victoria Bridge is, without 
exception, for gigantic proportions and vast length and 
strength, the greatest work of the kind in ancient or 
modern times. The entire bridge, with its approaches, 
is only sixty yards short of two miles ; it is five times 
longer than the Britannia Bridge, and has twenty-four 
spans of 242 feet each, and one great central span — itself 
an immense bridge, of 330 feet. The road is carried 
within iron tubes, sixty feet above the level of the St. 
Lawrence, w^hich runs beneath at a speed of about ten 
miles an hour, and in winter brings down the ice of 2000 
miles of lakes and upper rivers. The weight of iron in the 
tubes will be upward of 10,000 tons, supported on mass- 
ive stone piers. This gigantic work is upon the Grand 
Trunk Railway of Canada, which will be upward of 1100 
miles in length. 

Mr. Stephenson's labors were not confined to the con- 
struction and survey of railways. He made elaborate 
reports on the London and Liverpool system of Water- 
works ; he considerably aided with his counsel and ex- 
perience his friend Sir Joseph Paxton in his design for 
the Great Exhibition Building in Hyde Park; and he 
was a member of the Royal Commission. In 1847 Mr. 
Stephenson was returned to Parliament for Whitby, in 
the Conservative interest, which he continued to repre- 
sent until his death. His opinion upon scientific subjects 
w^as often sought by the House : this he gave impartially 
and with the modesty of true genius, and his information 
was exact. He took great interest in all scientific inves- 
tigations. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and 
of other scientific institutions. 

Li 1856, when Mr. Piazzi Smyth was sent out, with 



THE OITIL ENGIlSrEER. 423 

very limited means, on an astronomical expedition to 
Teneriffe, Mr. Stephenson, with a Uberality and zeal for 
research worthy of the name he bore, placed at Mr. 
Smyth's disposal, for as long a time as the object he had 
in view might require, his yacht Titania^ a finely-mould- 
vessel of the new school, of 140 tons burden, and manned 
with a picked crew of sixteen able seamen. As our ob- 
server went out and returned in this vessel, Mr. Stephen- 
son must have abandoned its use for the whole summer 
and autumn ; or, rather, as we have no doubt, he felt 
glad to find that an opportunity had occurred for en- 
abling him to employ it so well.* 

In the same spirit, in 1855, he paid off a large debt 
which the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society 
had incurred ; his motive being, to use his own phrase, 
gratitude for the benefits which he himself had received 
from it in early life, and a hope that other young men 
might find it equally useful. And in 1858 he had taken 
down the cottage in which he was born at Willington, 
and erected upon its site a group of schools for girls, 
boys, and infants, a mechanics' institute, etc., at the cost 
of two thousand pounds. 

As a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Mr. 
Stephenson's services were of the highest value ; never 
had the council a more efiicient confrere. As President 
in 1855-56, be presented an address, in which he applied 
himself with striking ability to the great question of 
British Railways. The data of this address are very im- 
portant. 

*' Parliamentary legislation for railways," said the President, *'is 
full of incongruities and absurdities. The Acts of Parliament which 
railways have been forced to obtain cost the country £14,000,000 ster- 
ling, the exclusive funds of Parliament, and of the system it enforced. 
The legislation of Parliament has made railways pay £70,000,000 of 
money to landowners for land and property, yet almost every estate 
traversed by a railway has greatly improved in value." 

Referring to the benefits derived from the Institution, Mr. Stephen- 
son observed that "it is the arena wherein have been exhibitecl that 
intelligence and familiar knowledge of abstract and practical science 
characterizing the papers and discussions. In consequence of the con- 
stant intercourse within its walls, professional rivalry and competition 
are now conducted with feelings of mutual forbearance and concilia- 

* National Revieiv, No. 18. 



424 DEATH OF ROBERT STEPHENSOX. 

tion, and the efforts of the members are all directed in the path of 
enterprise, and toward the fair reward of successful skill. The busi- 
ness of the civil engineer, from a crafr, has become a profession ; and, 
by union and professional uprightness, a great field is opened to 
energy and knowledge." 

In conclusion, Mr. Stephenson urged the duty devolv- 
ing on civil engineers of improving and perfecting the 
vast railway system, with which his name, in consequence 
of his father's works, had been largely associated. 

In the autumn of 1859, two months before he had 
reached his fifty-sixth year, Mr. Stephenson was struck 
down by death, in the maturity of his intellectual powers. 
His health is stated to have been impaired by the fatigues 
of his great work, the Britannia Bridge. He complained 
of failing strength just before his last journey to Norway. 
In Norway he became very unwell: his liver was so 
much affected that he hurried home; and when he 
arrived at Lowestoft, he was so weak that he had to be 
carried from his yacht to the railway, and thence to his 
residence in London, w^here his malady increased so 
rapidly as to leave from the first but faint hopes of his 
recovery. He had not strength enough to resist the 
disease, and he gradually sank, until at length he expired 
on October 12. He was interred in Westminster Abbey, 
on October 21, in the nave, next to Telford, the cele- 
brated engineer of his day. Men of kindred genius and 
engaged in kindred enterprises, they lie at last side by 
side. Stephenson was w^ont to say that, had Telford 
been buried in some quiet country church-yard, he should 
have wished his remains to be interred along with him 
there ; but, since he lay in Westminster Abbey, that 
was an idle wish. 

Mr. Stephenson's remains w^ere followed to the grave 
by his immediate relatives and friends, but the presence 
also of nearly two thousand persons at the interment 
gave the ceremony more of the character of a public 
than a private funeral. Among the spectators w^as a 
Avorking-man from the South-eastern Railway, who many 
years ago drove the first locomotive engine, called "the 
Harvey Combe," that ran from London to Birmingham, 
Robert Stephenson standing at his elbow all the w^ay. 
Westminster Abbey, as a place of sepulture, is commonly 



HIS CHARACTER. 425 

thought to have been reserved for sovereigns, warriors, 
and statesmen; but it must be remembered that here 
also rest many of our poets, and men of art and letters. 
The profession of an engineer almost belongs to our age ; 
and Robert Stephenson, though neither warrior nor states- 
man, was not the less, if indeed not the more, a public 
benefactor in his many gigantic works. He was as good 
as he was great, and the man was even more to be adr 
mired than the engineer. His benevolence was unbound- 
ed, and every year he expended thousands in doing good 
unseen. His chief care in this way was for the children 
of old friends who had been kind to him in early life, 
sending them to the best schools, and providiug for them 
with characteristic generosity. His own pupils regarded 
him with a sort of worship ; and the number of men be- 
longing to the Stephenson school who have taken very 
high rank in their peculiar walk shows how successful 
he was in his system of training, and how strong was 
the force of his example. Mr. Stephenson bequeathed 
by his will a large sum to various public institutions, 
located chiefly in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in the vicinity 
of which he was born, and with which his life was so 
closely identified. 

To conclude. Neither the originator of the Railway 
System, nor his son and coadjutor, were, in their day, 
honored with any national distinction in their own coun- 
try, but their memory will live for ages in the hearts of a 
grateful people. 



1 



ISAMBAED KINGDOM BRUNEL: RAILWAY 
WORKS AND IRON SHIP-BUILDING. 

IsAiNiBxVRD Kingdom Brunel, the only son of Sir Isam- 
bard Mark Brunei (of whom see sketch, p. 396-401), was 
born at Portsmouth in 1806. He was educated at the 
College of Henri Quatre at Caen. As Normandy was the 
birthplace of both his parents, his mother being a Miss 
Kingdom, of Rouen, this choice of a school is easily ex- 
plained. He was, as it were, born an engineer, about 
the time his father had completed the Block Machinery 
at Portsmouth. Those who recollect him as a boy re- 
member full well how rapidly, almost intuitively, indeed, 
he entered into and identified himself with all his father's 
plans and pursuits. He was very early distinguished for 
his powers of mental calculation, and for his rapidity and 
accuracy as a draughtsman. His power in this respect 
was not confined to professional or mechanical drawings 
only : he displayed an artist-like feeling for and a love of 
art, which in later days never deserted him. 

The bent of his mind when young was clearly seen by 
his father and by all who knew him. His education was 
therefore directed to qualify him for that profession in 
which he afterward distinguished himself. When he 
was about fourteen he was sent to Paris, where he was 
placed under the care of M. Masson, previous to entering 
the college of Henri Quatre at Caen, where he remain- 
ed two years. He then returned to England, and com- 
menced his professional career as his father's assistant in 
the Thames-Tunnel works. There are many of his fellow- 
laborers now living who well remember the energy and 
ability he displayed in that great scientific struggle against 
physical difiiculties and obstacles of no ordinary magni- 
tude, and it may be said that at this time the anxiety 
and fatigue he underwent, and an accident he met with, 
laid the foundation of future Aveakness and illness. In 



brunel's first works. 427 

one of the irruptions the rush of the water carried him 
up the shaft.* 

Upon this and a similarly trying occasion, he showed 
that zeal for his profession which characterized him to 
his dying day. Being an expert swimmer, he is known 
to have saved the lives of several of the workmen at the 
risk of his own. An eye-witness describes, while the 
tears ran down his cheeks, how the young man, still suf- 
fering from exposure and fatigue, paid a visit to the works 
during the men's dinner-hour. As soon as he appeared, 
they welcomed him with a hearty and respectful cheer. 
They crowded round him, stern, rugged men weeping, 
like children, as they affectionately grasped his hand. 
While the wives of the men he had saved fell on their 
knees before him, imploring blessings upon him, others 
cut little pieces from his coat, which they long treasured 
as relics.f 

Brimel displayed very early the resources not only of 
a trained and educated mind, but great, original, and in- 
ventive power. He possessed the advantage of being 
able to express or draw clearly and accurately whatever 
he had matured in his own mind. But not only that : 
he could work out with his own hands, if he pleased, the 
models of his own designs, whether in wood or iron. As 
a mere workman he would have excelled. Even at this 
early period Steam Navigation may be said to have 
occupied his mind, for he made the model of a boat, and 
worked it with locomotive contrivances of his own. 
Every thing he did, he did with all his might and 
strength, and he did it well : the same energy, thought- 
fulness, and accuracy, the same thorough conception and 
mastery of whatever he undertook, distinguished him in 
all minor things. 

Upon the stoppage of the Thames-Tunnel works by 
the irruption of the river, Mr. Brunei became employed 
on his own account upon various works. Docks at Sun- 
derland and Bristol were constructed by him ; and when 
it was proposed to throw a suspension bridge across the 
Avon at Clifton, his design and plan was approved by 

* See page 400. Mr. Brunei's improved use of the Diving-Bell, 
after one of the Thames-Tunnel irruptions, is noticed at pages GO-61. 
t yl//a.9 journal, 1859. 



428 bruxel's railway works. 

Mr. Telford. This work was never completed : he thus 
became known, however, in Bristol ; and when a railway 
was in contemplation between London and Bristol, and 
a company formed, Brunei was appointed their engineer. 
His earliest works were on the Bristol and Gloucester- 
shire and the Merthyr and Cardiff tram-ways, in which 
works his mind was first turned to the construction of 
railways ; and when he became engineer of the Great 
Western Railway Company, he recommended and intro- 
duced what is popularly called the Broad Gauge. Con- 
sidering this line as an engineering work alone, it may 
challenge comparison with any other railway in the 
world for the speed and ease of traveling upon it, al- 
though the Narrow Gauge is more economical in work- 
ing. Among the Great AVestern structures are the via- 
duct at Hanwell; the Maidenhead Bridge, which has 
the flattest arch of such large dimensions ever attempted 
in brick-work ; the Box Tunnel, which, at the date of its 
construction, was the longest in the world ; and the 
bridges and tunnels between Bath and Bristol, all more 
or less remarkable and original works. To these may 
be added the sea-wall of the South Devon Railway; and, 
above all, the tubular bridge over the Tamar, together 
with the similar bridge over the Wye at Chepstow.* 
On the South Devon Railway, Brunei adopted the plan 
which had been previously tried on the London and 
Croydon line, viz., of propelling the carriages by atmos- 
pheric pressure. The plan failed, but he entertained a 
strong opinion that this power would be found hereafter 
capable of adoption for locomotive purposes. It was in 
connection with the interests of the Great Western Rail- 
way that he first conceived the idea of building a steam- 

* These bridges are imposing monuments of Mr. Brunei's boldness 
and skill. The principle upon which the bridges in question were 
planned has been much criticised, but the works as executed undoubt- 
edly possess great strength and durability. The foundations of these 
bridges, under the customary modes adopted with such works, would 
have been extremely difficult of execution ; but Mr. BruneFs ready 
appreciation of the merits of new discoveries enabled him to take full 
advantage of the pneumatic process, by a modification of which he 
established the foimdations of the principal pier of the Saltash Bridge 
at a depth of water and soft mud at which no works of the kind had 
been previously founded. — The Evgwepi\ No. 195. 



IRON SHIP-BUILDING. 429 

ship to run between England and America. The Great 
Western was built accordingly. The power and tonnage 
of this vessel was about double that of the largest ship 
afloat at the time of her construction. Subsequently the 
Great Britain was designed and built under Mr. Brunei's 
superintendence. This ship, the result, as regards mag- 
nitude, of a few years' experience in iron ship-build- 
ing, was not only more than double the tonnage of the 
Great Western^ and by far the largest ship in existence, 
but she was more than twice as large as the Great 
Northern^ the largest iron ship which at that time had 
been attempted. While others hesitated about extend- 
ing the use of iron in the construction of ships, Mr. 
Brunei saw that it was the only material in which a very 
great increase of dimensions could safely be attempted. 
The very accident which befell the Great Britain upon 
the rocks in Dundrum Bay showed conclusively the skill 
he had then attained in the adaptation of iron to the 
purposes of ship-building. The means taken, under his 
immediate direction, to protect the vessel from the injury 
of winds and waves, attracted at the time much atten- 
tion, and they proved successful, for the vessel was again 
floated, and is still afloat. 

While noticing these great efforts to improve the art 
of ship-building at this date, it must not be forgotten 
that Mr. Brunei was the first man of eminence in his 
profession who perceived the capabilities of the screw as 
a propeller. From his experiments on a small scale in 
the Archimedes^ he saw his way clearly to the introduc- 
tion of that method of propulsion which he afterward 
adopted in the Great Britain, He next submitted 
it to the Admiralty, and succeeded in persuading the 
Board to give it a trial in her majesty's navy, under his 
direction. In the progress of this trial Brunei was 
much thwarted ; but the Rattler^ the ship Avhicli was at 
length placed at his disposal, and fitted w^itli engines 
and screw by Messrs. Maudslay and Field, gave results 
which justified his expectations under somewhat adverse 
circumstances. She was the first screw ship which the 
British navy possessed, and her satisfactory performances 
led to numerous others being added. 

The Bute Docks at Cardiff, and the North Dock at 



430 THE ''great eastern." 

Sunderland, were Brunei's work, as was also the elegant 
Hungerford Suspension Bridge across the Thames. To 
his care, in 1850, was intrusted the Tuscan portion of the 
Sardinian railway. During the Russian war he was call- 
ed upon to fit up the Renikoi hospitals on the Darda- 
nelles : he laid on a special supply of water from the ad- 
jacent hills, and constructed short lines of railway, with 
easy carriages, to facilitate the removal of the wounded 
from the landing-place to the difierent wards. 

We now approach Mr. Brunei's most stupendous work, 
and which, without querulous remark, must be consider- 
ed to have shortened his valuable life. Prepared by ex- 
perience and much personal devotion to the subject of 
Steam Navigation by means of large ships, he, in the lat- 
ter part of 1851, began to work out the idea he had long 
entertained — that to make long voyages economically 
and speedily by steam, required that the vessels should 
be large enough to carry the coal for the entire voyage 
outward, and, unless the facilities for obtaining coal were 
very great at the outport, for the return voyage also ; 
and that vessels much larger than any then built could 
be navigated with great advantages from the mere effects 
of size. Hence originated the Great Eastern, 

The mere idea of a ship of a capacity six or eight times that of any 
thing afloat had doubtless occurred to many an enthusiastic schemer, 
for the sentiment of magnitude and immensity is innate in all in whose 
character imagination is an element ; but Mr. Brunei gave shape to 
his idea by preparing plans and otherwise convincing himself of its 
practicability. As an example of naval construction, the Great East- 
ern is unquestionably the work of Mr. Scott Russell, every way as 
much so as were the Great Western and Great Britain the works of 
Mr. Patterson, of Bristol. Yet Mr. Brunei's services were of hardly 
less importance ; and every one at all conversant with the organiza- 
tion of an establishment devoted to the construction of steam-vessels 
is aware that the duties of the naval architect and builder, and those 
of the engineer, are each clearly defined and in no way conflicting. 
Certain it is that, whether the Great Eastern prove successful or other- 
wise, Mr. Brunei's name will be indelibly associated with her history 
as long as that shall suiTive. — The Engineer, No. 195. 

The success of this great work, in a practical point of 
view, is admitted, as well as the strength and stability of 
the construction of the vessel. The difficulties attendant 
on the launching of the ship in 1858 at one time seemed 
insurmountable. To a friend, who despondingly express- 
ed his fears that the huge ship would never reach the 



DEATH OF I. K. BEUNEL. 431 

water, Brunei quietly replied, " Oh, she shall move — she 
mu^t !" He never for a moment despaired of success. 
His health, however, had been undermined by these great 
exertions, and his death was hastened by the fatigue and 
mental §itrain caused by his efforts to superintend the 
completion of the great ship. We must not forbear to 
mention that for several years past Mr. Brunei had been 
suffering from ill health, brought on by over-exertion. 
Nevertheless, he allowed himself no relaxation from his 
professional labors ; and it was during the period of bodi- 
ly pain and weakness that his greatest difficulties were 
surmounted and some of his greatest works achieved. 

By his death one more name has been added to the 
list of those who have been stricken down when their 
hopes were highest and victory w^ithin their grasp. By 
a coincidence, as it would appear, Mr. Brunei went on 
board the great ship for the last time on the first day 
when it could be said she was ready for sea. If not so 
in every detail, she was, as a whole, essentially com- 
pleted, although still untried. On that day, the 5th of 
September, Mr. Brunei suffered an attack of paralysis, 
from which he never recovered. He sank until the even- 
ing of the 15th of September, when he passed away, still 
young, and upon the completion of the greatest work of 
his life. 

Mr. Brunei died in his paternal house at Westminster. 
He was a fellow of the Royal Society, having been elect- 
ed at the early age of twenty-six. In 1857 he was ad- 
mitted by the University of Oxford to the honorary de- 
gree of Doctor of Civil Laws. He had filled the office 
of Vice-President of the Royal Society; he was Vice- 
President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and of 
the Society of Arts ; a Fellow of the Astronomical, Ge- 
ographical, and Geological Societies, and a Chevalier of 
the Legion of Honor. But he had received no distinc- 
tion from his own country — not even the knightly honor 
which his father bore. Yet he lived and died with a 
scientific reputation bounded only by the limits of the 
civilized world. He has left too many monuments of him- 
self, raised both on land and sea, to permit of his being 
soon forgotten. It would be difficult to go far without 
finding something to recall the memory of Isambard 
KinoYlom Brunei. 



PHOTOGEAPHY AND THE STEEE03C0PE. 

'•'■ With one touch virtuous 
Th' arch-chemic sun, so far from us remote, 
Produces." Milto^-'s Paradise Lost^ b. ill- 

If evidence were needed to show by what slow and 
gradual means the germs of great discoveries have been 
reared through a long lapse of years into full develop- 
ment, it might be found in the progress of Photography, 
since it has been the work of half a century of French, 
English, and German researches to suggest, apply, and 
finally develop the existence of the photographic element. 
The whole art, in all its varieties, rests upon the fact of 
the blackening effects of light upon certain substances, 
and chiefly upon silver, on which it acts with a decom- 
posing power. The silver being dissolved in a strong 
acid, surfaces steeped hi the solution become incrusted 
with minute particles of the metal, which in this state 
are darkened with increased rapidity. These facts were 
first ascertained and recorded, as regards silver combined 
with chlorine, in 1777, by Scheele, a native of Pomerania ; 
and in 1801, in connection with nitrate of silver, by Rit- 
ter, of Jena. Here, therefore, were the raw materials for 
the unknown art. A very short time after Ritter's re- 
sults. Dr. Wollaston made the same experiments, without 
having been informed what had been done on the Conti- 
nent. This coincidence was, however, succeeded by the 
contemporary labors of three eminent experimenters. In 
conjunction with Mr. Thomas Wedgwood (the brother 
of Josiah), Sir Humphrey Davy, before June, 1802, suc- 
ceeded, by means of a camera-obscura, in obtaining im- 
ages upon paper, or white leather, prepared with nitrate 
of silver, by placing it behind a painting on glass exposed 
to the solar light, when the rays transmitted through 
the difterently-painted surfaces produced distinct tints 
of brown and black, differing in intensity according to 
the shades of the ])icture ; and, where the light was un- 
altered, the color became deepest. Thus was the first 



photogeaphy: niepce's experiments. 433 

stain designedly traced upon the prepared substance. 
Mr. Wedgwood, by this method, took profiles or shadows 
of figures, and delineated the woody fibres of leaves, the 
dehcate patterns of lace, and the beautiful wings of in- 
sects. But the charm, once set agoing, refused to stop ; 
the slightest exposure to light continued the action, and 
the image was lost in the darkening of the whole paper. 
In short, there was wanting the next secret oi fixing the 
images. The process seems, therefore, to have excited 
very little notice, and the experiment was left to be tak- 
en up by others, Sir Humphrey Davy prophetically ob- 
serving, " Nothing but a method of preventmg the un- 
shaded parts of the delineation from being colored by 
the exposure to the day is wanted to render this process 
as useful as it is elegant." 

The third worker then in the field was Dr. Thomas 
Young. In 1802, when Mr. Wedgwood was "making 
profiles by the agency of light," and Sir Humphrey Davy 
was " copying on prepared paper the images of small 
objects produced by means of the solar microscope," Dr. 
Young was taking photographs, upon paper dipped in a 
solution of nitrate of silver, of the colored rings observed 
by Newton ; and his experiment clearly proved that the 
agent was not the luminous rays in the sun's light, but 
the invisible or chemical rays beyond the violet. This 
result is described in the Bakerian Lecture for 1803. 

Meanwhile, in 1803, Dr. Wollaston proved the action 
of light upon gum guiacum, and in due time another ex- 
perimenter entered the field, who availed himself of this 
class of materials. M. Nicephorus Niepce, a French gen- 
tleman of private fortune, who lived at Chalons-sur-Saone, 
and pursued chemistry for his pleasure — probably unac- 
quainted with the labors of Davy and Wedgwood — like 
them, made use of the camera to cast his images ; but 
the substance on which he received them was a polished 
plate of pewter, coated with a thin bituminous surfiice. 
He gained the important step of rendering his images 
permanent, which he was ten years in attaining, from 
1814 to 1824. His pictures, on issuing from the camera, 
were invisible to the eye, and only disengaged by the 
application of a solvent, which removed those sliaded 
parts unbardencd by the action of the light. Nor did 

T 



434 THE DAGUERREOTYPE. 

they present the usual reversal of the position of light and 
shade known as a negative appearance, but, whether tak- 
en from nature or from an engraving, were identical in 
effect, or what is called positive. Neverthel-ess, Niepce's 
process was difficult, capricious, and tedious, and he nev- 
er obtained an image from nature in less than from seven 
to twelve hours, so that the changes in lights and shad- 
ows necessarily rendered it imperfect. He therefore de- 
voted his discovery mostly to copying engravings, and 
converted his plate, by means of an acid, into a surface 
for ordinary printing, as impressions still show. 

Niepce seems to have obtained no definite results;, 
but, foreseeing the value of his art, he went to England 
in 1827, and settled at Kew. He then drew up^a short 
memorial, which he forwarded, with specimens, to the 
hands of George IV. ; and at the close of the year Niepce 
submitted to the Royal Society a paper on his experi- 
ments, with several sketches on metal, of which commu- 
nication the Society took no notice, it being their rule 
not to entertain a discovery which involved a secret. 
M. Niepce, therefore, returned to his own country, so 
chilled by the English indifference that, but for an acci- 
dental circumstance, he would not have proceeded far- 
ther. However, an optician having indiscreetly revealed 
to Niepce the secret that M. Daguerre,* the dioramic 

* Louis Jacques Maude Daguerre, who had Xon^ been known in 
England as one of the artists of the Dioramic Exhibition in the Re- 
gent's Park, died in Paris, January 10, 1851, in his sixty-second year. 
He was a member of the French Academy and of the Academy of St. 
Luke's ; and many of his pictures are highly valued by his countiy- 
men. It appears that the experiments which led to the discovery of 
the Daguen-eotype were made by Daguerre while investigating the 
chemical changes produced by the solar radiations, in the hope of ap- 
plying these phenomena to the production of peculiar effects in his 
dioramic paintings : such is the relationship of the Diorama and the 
Daguerreotype. The perfect illusion of the dioramic pictures has 
been thus explained : ' ' When an object is viewed at so great a dis- 
tance that the optic axes of both eyes are sensibly parallel when di- 
rected toward it, the perspective projections of it, seen by each eye 
separately, are similar ; and the appearance to the two eyes is precise- 
ly the same as when the object is seen by one eye only. There is, in 
such case, no difference between the visual appearance of an object in 
relief and its perspective projection on a plane surface ; hence picto- 
rial representations of distant objects, when those cii'cumstances which 
would prevent or disturb the illusion are carefully excluded, may be 



THE DAGUEEEEOTYPE. 435 

artist, was pursuing researches analogous to his own at 
Paris, they entered into a copartnership in 1829. M. 
ISTiepce died in 1833, without having contributed any- 
farther improvement to the now common stock ; and M. 
Daguerre, taking into partnership Mepce's son, Isidore, 
discovered an essentially new process, which was named 
after its inventor, the Daguerreotype. By discarding the 
use of the bituminous varnish, and substituting a highly- 
pohshed plate of silver, he first availed himself of that 
great agent in photographic science, the action of iodine, 
by means of which he so increased the sensitiveness of 
his plate as to produce the image in fewer minutes than 
it had previously taken hours. At the same time, the 
invisible picture was brought to light by the fumes of 
mercury, after which a strong solution of common salt 
removed those portions of the surface which would oth- 
erwise have continued to darken, and would have ren- 
dered the impression permanent. 

' In 1839 the Daguerreotype came forth to the world. 
Men little thought how many years of patient research 
had been expended in arriving at this result. Daguerre 
and Niepce then applied to the French Chambers, stat- 
ing that they possessed a secret which, if protected by 
patent, would be comparatively lost to society. A Com- 
mission was appointed by the French government, and 
the secret itself was intrusted to M. Arago, who succeed- 
ed at once in executing a beautiful specimen of the art. 
He then addressed the Chambers, urging the immense 
advantages which might have been derived, " for exam- 
ple, during the expedition to Egypt, by means of repro- 
duction so exact and so rapid : to copy the millions and 
millions of hieroglyphics which entirely cover the great 
monuments at Thebes, Memphis, Carnac, etc., would re- 
quire scores of years and legions of artists, whereas with 
the Daguerreotype a single man could suffice to bring 
this vast labor to a happy conclusion." M. Biot at the 
same time compared Daguerre's invention to the retina 
on the eye, the object being represented on one and the 
other surfaces with almost equal accuracy. The result 

rendered such peifect resemblances of the objects they are intended to 
represent as to be mistaken for them. The Diorama is an instance 
of this." — Professor Wheatstone ; Philosophical TransactionSj 1838. 



436 THE TALBOTYPE. 

was, that a pension of 6000 francs (£250) was awarded 
to M. Daguerre, and 4000 francs (£166) to M. Niepce; 
and M. Arago declared that " France had adopted the 
discovery, and that from the first moment she had cher- 
ished a pride in liberally bestowing it a gift to the whole 
worlciy"^ Nevertheless, the Daguerreotype was patent- 
ed in England, which would have been thus restrained 
for eight years from the use of this important process ; 
but the specification was afterward found defective, and 
the patent invahdated. All that has since been done for 
the Daguerreotype has not been any essential deviation 
from its process. 

We now turn to England, where the undivided honor 
of having first successfully worked out the secret of 
Photography belongs to Mr. Fox Talbot, a private gen- 
tleman, who, in his delightful retreat at Lacock Abbey, 
in Wiltshire, pursued chemical researches for his own 
amusement. He took up the ground to which Davy 
and Wedgwood had made their way. Paper was the 
medium, which he made sensible to light by nitrate of 
silver, and then fixed the image by common salt. He 
first called his process photogenic drawing ; then calo- 
type^ which his friends changed to Talbotype^ in imitation 
of Daguerre's example. Mr. Fox Talbot is stated in the 
Quarterly Review^ No. 202, to have sent his method to 
the Royal Society in the same month that Daguerre's 
discovery was made known (Jan., 1839) ; but Sir David 
Brewster dates Mr. Talbot's communication six months 
earlier. 

As a new art, which gave employment to thousands, Mr. Talbot 
brought it to a high degree of perfection. He expended large sums 
of money in obtaining for the public the full benefit of his invention ; 
and toward the termination of his patent he liberally surrendered to 
photographic amateurs and others all the rights which he possessed, 
with the one exception of taking portraits for sale, which he had con- 
veyed to others, and which he was bound by law and in honor to 
secure to them. As Mr. Talbot had derived no pecuniary benefit 
from his patent, he had intended to apply for an extension of it to the 
Privy Council ; but the art had been so universally practiced, that 
numerous parties interested in opposing the application combined 

* Arago was so impressed with the vast importance of Photography 
in all its relations, that (Lord Brougham informs us) the last years of 
his life were chiefly occupied with whatever belonged to this subject. 



THE EARLIEST DAGUERREOTYPES. 437 

with others to reduce the patent, and thus prevent the possibility of its 
renewal. Although we are confident that a jury of philosophers in 
any part of the world would have given a verdict in favor of Mr. 
Talbot's patent, taken as a whole, and so long unchallenged, yet we 
regret to say that an English judge and jury were found to deprive 
him of his right, and transfer it to the public. The patrons of science 
and of art stood aloof in the contest, and none of our scientific insti- 
tutions, and no intelligent member of the government, came forward 
to claim from the state a national reward to Mr. Talbot. How dif- 
ferent in France was the treatment of Niepce and Daguerre ! 

It is a curious fact, that Daguerre's patent for the sister art of the 
Daguerreotype was also invalidated by an English jury; ^'and," says 
Sir David Brewster, "it will never be forgotten in the history of art 
that the rights of property over the tw^o noblest inventions of the age, 
which the patent laws were enacted to secure, were wrested from their 
owners by the unjust decision of an English jury, prompted by the 
selfish interests of individuals who had been fattening on the genius 
of the inventors." — Encydopcedia Britannica, 8th edit. 

Next, in April, 1839, the Rev. J. B. Reade delineated 
objects of natural history by the agency of light, from 
their images taken by the solar microscope. 

One of the earliest attempts in Paris was thus described : * * A pub- 
lic experiment of the Daguerreotype was made by its inventor on 
Saturday last, in one of the halls of the hotel of the Quai d'Orsay. 
M, Daguerre described the mode of using his instrument to an assem- 
bly of about a hundred and twenty persons, and, in the course of an 
hour and a few minutes, produced a beautiful view of the river, the 
terrace, and the palace of the Tuileries." In 1839, however, the proc- 
ess at Paris occupied but from three to thirty minutes, and Daguerre 
was able to use the apparatus in the public streets without being no- 
ticed by the passengers. Still, the disappointment in the early plates 
w^as costly and mortifying, and reminded one of Uncle Toby's "here 
to-day and gone to-morrow." Many a plate for which ten guineas 
were paid disappeared in a corresponding number of days. 

The first experiment made in England with the Daguerreotype was 
exhibited by M. St. Croix, on Friday, September 13, 1839, at No. 7 
Piccadilly, nearly opposite the southern Circus of Eegent Street, when 
the picture produced was a beautiful miniature representation of the 
houses, pathway, sky, etc., resembling an exquisite mezzotint. M. 
St. Croix subsequently removed to the Argyll Rooms, Regent Street, 
where his experimental results became a scientific exhibition. The 
discovery was patented by Mr. Miles Berry, who sold the first license 
to M. Claudet for £100 or £200 a year ; and in twelve months after 
disposed of the patent to Mr. Beard, who, however, did not take a 
Daguerreotype portrait until after Dr. Draper had sent from New 
York a portrait to the editor of the Philosophical Magazine, with a 
paper on the subject. 

The Talbotype process underwent various improve- 
ments by Herschel, Cundell, Bingham, Channing, Le Gray, 



438 PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESSES. 

Martin, Miiller, Stewart, Hunt, Fyfe, Furlong, Blanquart, 
Everard, Coll en, Ryan, Woods, Home, Saguer, Flacheron, 
and others ; but the most important improvements were 
made by M. Victor Niepce and Mr. Scott Archer, the 
former substituting albumen, and the latter collodion, 
for paper. The albumen process can only be employed 
for statues and landscapes, and with it have been pro- 
duced larger and more artistic pictures than by any 
other means. Mr. Archer generously threw his marvel- 
ous improvement open to the public. The birth and 
parentage of collodion are both among the recent won- 
ders of the age. Gun-cotton is but a child in the annals 
of chemical science ; and collodion, which is a solution 
of this compound in ether and alcohol, is its offspring : 
its first use was in surgery, its second in photography. 
Collodion may also be prepared from paper, flax, the pith 
of the elder, and many other vegetable substances. Not 
only does it provide a film of perfect transparency, te- 
nuity, and intense adhesiveness ; not only is it easy of 
manipulation, portable, and preservable, but it supplies 
that element of rapidity which, more than any thing else, 
has given the miraculous character to the art. 

The instantaneous process of taking a picture on col- 
lodion in half a second has enabled the artist to delineate 
/ " a thoroughfare in London Avith its noon-day crowd." 
Farther than this the powers of Photography can never 
go : light is made to portray with a celerity only second 
to that with which it travels ! 

We have not space to do more than state that Mr. 
Norton's important application of bichromate of potash 
has led M. E. Becquerel to his photographic paper, with 
iodide of starch ; Mr. Hunt to his chromatype ; and the 
photographic property of this salt is also the foundation 
of M. Pretsch's photo-galvanography, and of some at- 
tempts at photo-lithography. Mr. Talbot, in 1841, pat- 
ented a more sensitive photographic method ; and sub- 
sequently an instantaneous process, photographic engrav- 
ings, and the phoglyphic process. 

Meanwhile, Sir John Herschel and Mr. Hunt found 
preparations of gold, platinum, mercury, iron, copper, tin, 
nickel, manganese, lead, potash, etc., more or less sensitive, 
and capable of producing pictures of beauty and distinct- 



APPLICATIONS OF PHOTOGRAPHY. 439 

ive character; and paper prepared with the juices of 
beautiful flowers was put in requisition. 

Photography may be said to have depended for its 
perfection upon wonders only a little older than itself. 
Iodine, on which all popular photography rests, was not 
discovered until 1811 ; and bromine, the only other equal- 
ly sensitive substance, not till 1826 ; and gun-cotton and 
chloroform only just preceded collodion. To these may 
be added the optical improvements purposely contrived 
or adapted for the service of the photograph, besides in- 
numerable other mechanical aids. The value of photog- 
raphy, when kept perfectly distinct, as an auxiliary to 
the artist, is also unquestionably great, though only be- 
ginning to be duly and correctly appreciated.* 

Although M. Biot, in 1840, considered it as an illusion 
to expect photographs to have the color of the objects 
lohich they represent^ yet an important advance has been 
made to this result by M. Claudet and Sir John Herschel 
in copying the colors of nature. Mr. Hunt " produced 
colored images, not merely impressions of the rays of the 
spectrum, but copies in the camera of colored objects." 
But the most striking results have been obtained by M. 
Edmund Becquerel and M. Niepce St. Victor ; the latter 
is said to have secured " all the colors of a picture by 
preparing a bath composed of the deuto-chloride of 
copper." 

The most important application of Photography has 
certainly been to the Stereoscope, not only in reference 
to art, but to the great purposes of education, and to the 
illustration of works on every branch of knowledge. 
But perhaps one of the most curious applications of the 
art has been to Microscopic Portraits, by Mr. Dancer, of 
Manchester. Some of these are so small that ten thou- 
sand could be included in a square inch ; and yet, when 
magnified, the pictures have all the smoothness and vigor 
of ordinary photographs. 

Lord Brougham observes: "How vast an improvement of social 
life, and how valuable an addition to our power of executing the law, 
has been this optical discovery, by which we have made the sun our 
fellow-workman ! It would have been deemed a romance had any 
one foretold, from observing the effect of light in discoloring certain 

* See Painting Popularly Explained, p. 114-119. 



440 THE STEREOSCOPE. 

substances, such a consummation as obtaining the most accurate por- 
traits in a second ; and the consequent power, not only of preseiTing 
the features of those most revered and beloved, but of preventing the 
escape of criminals, the commission of numberless frauds, and the 
defeat of the injured in seeking the recovery of their rights. In the 
sciences of astronomy, zoology, geology, meteorology, ethnology, elec- 
tricity, and magnetism, Photography has been advantageously em- 
ployed. The spots on the sun, the surface of the moon, the forms of 
the planets, and even groups of stars, have been delineated by their 
own light. M. de la Rue has obtained pictures of the moon analogous 
to binocular axes, which, when aided by the Stereoscope, exhibit her 
as a solid globe. The meteorologist registers photographically, in his 
absence, the indications of the barometer, thermometer, and hygrome- 
ter ; the variations of the earth's magnetism are recorded every min- 
ute on chemically prepared paper : and the electricity of the atmos- 
phere, brought down into the observatory, is made to exhibit on paper 
the number of its variations and the intensity of its action. The 
ethnologist has begun to collect accurate pictures of the different 
races of man. The zoologist has obtained forms of animal life which 
the painter had attempted in vain to preserve. The geologist has 
obtained delineations of phenomena which defied the highest efforts 
of the pencil. And the botanist has transferred to imperishable tab- 
lets those beautiful and complex forms of vegetable life which we seek 
in vain in the richest botanical collections." — Sir David Brewster ; 
EncyclopcEdia Britannica, 

Within a score of years from the first experiment ex- 
hibited by the Stereoscope, it has been advanced from a 
rude and imperfect apparatus to " one of the most popn 
lar and interesting instruments which science has pre- 
sented to the arts." It is employed for rejDresenting 
sohd figures, by combining in one image two plane 
representations of the object as seen by each eye sepa- 
rately; or, in other words, two pictures of any object, 
taken from different points of view, are seen as a single 
picture of that object, having the actual appearance of 
relief or solidity. Hence the name, from two Greek 
words signifying Solid I view. 

That we see with two eyes, yet that only a single 
representation of the object is presented to the mind, and 
that the picture of bodies seen by both eyes is formed 
by the union of dissimilar pictures formed by each, must 
have been very early observed, and the cause was specu- 
lated on by the earliest Greek philosophers. Euclid 
knew these palpable truths more than two thousand 
years ago, and showed by means of a sphere that each 
eye sees a dissimilar representation of an object, ^ive 



THE STEREOSCOPE. 441 

centuries later, Galen endeavored to explain the matter 
by stating that the dissimilar pictures are not seen at 
the same instant, but successively ; and that these rapid- 
ly-succeeding pictures produce on the mind the impres- 
sion which is conceived of the object. In looking at 
the diagram given by Galen, we recognize at once not 
only the principle, but the construction of the Stereo- 
scope.* 

As the vision of the object was obtained by the union 
of these dissimilar pictures, an instrument only was 
wanted to take such pictures, and another to combine 
them. " The Binocular Photographic Camera," says Sir 
David Brewster, " was the one, and the Stereoscope the 
other." 

Baptista Porta repeats the proposition of Euclid on 
the vision of a sphere with one and both eyes, but, believ- 
ing that we only see with one eye at a time, he denies 
the accuracy of Euclid's theorems ; and while he admits 
the correctness of Galen's views, he endeavors to explain 
them upon other principles. The Greek physician, there- 
fore (Galen), and the Neapolitan philosopher (Porta), 
who has employed a more distinct diagram, certainly 
knew and adopted the fundamental principle of the 
Stereoscope, and nothing more was required for produc- 
ing pictures in full relief than a simple instrument for 
uniting the right and left hand dissimilar pictures. 

We next find, in the treatise on Painting which Leo- 
nardo da Vinci left behind him in manuscript, a distinct 
reference to the dissimilarity of the pictures seen by each 
eye as the reason why " a painting, though conducted 
with the greatest art, and finished to the last perfection 
with regard to its contours, its lights, its shadows, and 
its colors, can never show a relievo equal to that of the 
natural objects, unless these be viewed at a distance, and 
with a single eye," which he proceeds to demonstrate. 
Aguilonius, the learned Jesuit, who published his Optics 
in 1613, next attempts to explain, but without success, 
why the two dissimilar pictures of a solid seen by each 
eye do not, when united, give a confused and imperfect 
view of it ; but, down to our time, natural philosophers 

* The Stereoscope ; its History, Theory, and Construction, By Sir 
David Brewster. 1856. 

T 2 



442 WHEATSTONE S STEREOSCOPE. 

have been almost universally content to adopt the opin- 
ion that we see with only one eye at a time. 

Thus the matter rested until, in 1838, Mr. Wheat stone 
reopened the question of vision by one or by two eyes 
by arguing that the appearance of relief and solidity 
which we obtain in looking at objects in nature arises 
from there being a dissimilar picture of the object pro- 
jected simultaneously on the retina of each eye, the optic 
axes of which are not parallel, whereas in viewing a pic- 
torial representation two similar pictures are projected 
on the retinae, and hence the resultant flatness ; and Mr. 
Wheatstone sought to illustrate this theory by the ingen- 
ious instrument known as the Stereoscope. Its princi- 
ple has been thus simplified by Mr. R. Hunt, F.R.S. : 

When we look at any round object, first with one eye, and then 
with the other, we discover that with the right eye we see most of the 
right-hand side of the object, and with the left eje most of the left- 
hand side. These two images are combined, and we see an object 
which we know to be round. 

This is illustrated by the Stereoscope, which consists of two min'ors 
placed each at an angle of 45 degrees, or of two semi-lenses turned 
with their curved sides toward each other. To view its phenomena, 
two pictures are obtained by the camera on photographic paper of 
any object in two positions, corresponding with the conditions of 
viewing it with the two eyes. By the mirrors or the lenses these dis- 
similar pictures are combined within the eye, and the vision of an act- 
ually solid object is produced from the pictures represented on a plane 
surface. 

The Stereoscope excited considerable interest among 
scientific persons when first exhibited ; the pictures pre- 
pared for it were almost exclusively dissimilar outlines 
of various geometrical solids ; but it has been almost 
superseded by the Refracting Stereoscope, in which the 
simple principle of the Stereoscope is combined with, or 
rather aided by, photography. This principle might 
have been discovered a century ago, for the reasoning 
which led to it was independent of all the properties of 
light : but it would never have been illustrated, far less 
multiplied as it now is, without photography. A few 
diagrams, of sufficient identity and difference to prove 
the truth of the principle, might have been constructed 
by hand for the gratification of a few sages ; but no art- 
ist, it is to be hoped, could have been found possessing 
the requisite ability and stupidity to execute two por- 



Brewster's lenticular stereoscope. 443 

traits, or two groups, or two interiors, or two landscapes, 
identical in the most elaborate detail, and yet differing 
in point of view by the inch between the two human 
eyes, by which the principle is brought to the level of 
any capacity. Here, therefore, the accuracy and insens- 
ibility of a machine could alone avail ; and if in the or- 
der of things the cheap popular toy which the Stereo- 
scope now represents was necessary for the use of man, 
the photograph was first necessary for the service of the 
Stereoscope!^ 

Sir David Brewster, in a series of elaborate experi- 
ments to establish his theory of binocular vision, as dis- 
tinguished from that of Professor Wheatstone, invented 
the Lenticular Stereoscope^ which he has fully illustrated 
in his able volume on the Stereoscope. It consists of a 
pyramidal box, blackened on the inside, and having a 
lid for the admission of light when the pictures are 
opaque. The box is open below, in order to let the 
light pass through the pictures when they are transpar- 
ent. The top of the box consists of two portions, in 
one of which is the right-eye tube, containing a semi- 
lens or quarter-lens, and in the other the left-eye tube, 
also containing a semi-lens or quarter-lens. The two dis- 
similar pictures (or slide) are placed in a groove in the 
bottom of the box, when, on looking through the eye- 
tubes, the pictures are seen united into one single pic- 
ture ; and the object or objects, if a proper amount of 
light is obtained, stand out with an almost magical ap- 
pearance of relief and solidity. Thus has the employ- 
ment of photography for the stereographs wonderfully 
extended the range of the instrument, and rendered it 
one of the most popular means of social amusement, and, 
rightly used, an extremely valuable means of instruction. 
We have said that each of the eye-pieces contains a 
semi-lens : it is by means of these semi-lenses, transfer- 
ring the two dissimilar pictures or stereographs to a 
middle point, and their union thereon, that the stereo- 
scopic effect is produced. 

A detective application, similar to that of photographic 
portraits, has been devised for the Stereoscope. In 1859, 
it was ascertained by experiment that if two thoroughly 
* Quarterly Review^ No. 202. 



444 THE STEREOSCOPE. 

identical copies of ordinary print be placed side by side 
in the Stereoscope, they will not offer any unusual ap- 
pearance. But if there be the slightest, although inap- 
preciable, difference — as, for instance, in the interval sep- 
arating the same words — the difference will be made evi- 
dent in the stereoscope by the elevation into relief (or 
the reverse) of the corresponding space above the ad- 
joining parts. Professor Dove, of Berlin, proposes the 
above as an infallible means of distinguishing a forged 
bank-note from a genuine one, etc. 



CAOUTCHOUC AND ITS MANUFACTUEES. 

The remarkable substance known as Caoutchouc is 
produced by many different plants, and its manifold ap- 
plications within comparatively few years are certainly 
one of the marvels of our scientific age. "How curious, 
how wonderful," says an acute writer,* "is it to find a 
milky juice which exudes from certain trees on the banks 
of the Amazon, or from vines in the jungles of India, 
transformed by the ingenuity of man, on the banks of the 
Thames or the Irwell, into such a vast variety of useful 
and interesting objects ! But it is still more curious and 
still more wonderful to reflect that this milky juice, with 
the many uses to which it is put, forms a necessary part 
of the progress of civilization, and tends to unite all the 
human race into one great and glorious family." 

Caoutchouc was first introduced into Europe early in 
the last century; but its origin was unknown till the 
visit of the French Academicians to South America in 
1715. They ascertained that it was the inspissated juice 
of a Brazilian tree, called by the natives Hhve ; and an 
account of the discovery was sent to the Academy by M. 
de la Condamine in 1736. One-and-thirty years later, 
1767, a specimen was first brought to England, and Avas 
sent to Mr. Canton by Sir Joseph Banks as "two balls 
of the new Elastic Substance." In 1772, Dr. Priestley 
thus speaks of the new substance in his Introditction to 
Perspective : " I have seen a substance excellently adapt- 
ed to the purpose of wiping from paper the marks of a 
black-lead pencil. It must therefore be of singular use 
to those who practice drawing. It is sold by Mr. Nairne, 
mathematical-instrument maker, opposite the Royal Ex- 
change. He sells a cubical piece of about half an inch 
for three shillings, and he says it will last several years." 

From this first application arose the name of India' 
rubber. The "new substance" engaged, as soon as it was 
* Mr. Thomas Hodgskin. 



448 MANUFACTURE OF CAOUTCHOUC. 

known, the " attention of philosophers." They immersed 
it in all kinds of solvents, tried its influence on sounds, 
found in it a confirmation of the celebrated theory of 
latent heat, ascertained its elements according to the then 
Imowledge of the elements ; but they made nothing of 
it. For more than 120 years they had it in their hands 
and in their laboratories, thought it a wonderful sub- 
stance, which might be converted to all kinds of uses, 
but got no farther than to ascertain that by boiling it in 
water its edges became soft, and that pieces of it then 
pressed together could be united into one homogeneous 
whole, which led to the formation of flexible tubes and a 
few surgical instruments. 

About the year 1820, however, Mr. Thomas Hancock, 
afterward of the firm of Mackintosh and Co., being en- 
i gaged in mechanical pursuits, began to take great inter- 
est in Caoutchouc. He wondered that such a curious 
substance should have been put to little or no other use 
than rubbing out pencil-marks ; his wonder excited his 
exertions ; chemical knowledge he had none, and trying, 
like the chemists, to find, out a solvent, he failed. Then, 
taking a more simple means, he cut Caoutchouc into nar- 
row slips, inclosmg them in a case of thin leather or cot- 
ton ; and elastic springs for gloves, braces, etc. — that be- 
fore were formed only of metal w^ire in a spiral fonn — 
were made of this substance. This was the original new 
application, in 1820, of Caoutchouc. Mr. Hancock fol- 
loAved up his success. He was always at work with his 
rubber. He cut it into shreds ; he rent it into pieces ; 
he invented machines for chewing it and pounding it 
into a mass ; he stewed it in digesters ; he baked it ; he 
made it into solid blocks ; he spread it into sheets almost 
as thin as the finest textures of the animal frame: he 
found one solvent for it, which had before been frequent- 
ly tried, but only under the new mechanical form which 
he gave it did oil of turpentine (camphine) answer the 
purpose. Other persons found other solvents. From 
1820 the new applications of this curious substance were 
numerous and successive — in other countries, especially 
in America, as well as here. 

Mr. Hancock has been truly called the *' father of this 
important and wonderfully-increasing branch of the arts ;" 



MANUPACTtJRE OF CAOUTCHOUC. 449 

but it had many nurses. In 1823 Mr. Macintosh applied 
the naphtha obtained from coal-tar to dissolve rubber, 
thus making a water-proof varnish ; he invented and 
brought into use the garments and the cloth which bear 
his name. 

The manufacture of Caoutchouc has three principal 
branches: 1. The condensation of the crude lumps or 
shreds of Caoutchouc, as imported, into compact homo- 
geneous blocks, and the cutting of these blocks into cakes 
or shreds, for the stationer, surgeon, shoemaker, etc. 
2. The filature of either the India-rubber bottles, or the 
artificial sheet Caoutchouc, into tapes and threads, which, 
being clothed with silk, cotton, linen, or woolen yarns, 
form the basis of elastic tissues of every kind. 3. The 
conversion of the refuse cuttings and coarser qualities of 
Caoutchouc into a viscid varnish, which, being applied 
between two surfaces of cloth, constitutes the well-known 
double fabrics, impervious to water and air. 

It is curious to read that this application of Caoutchouc 
to water-proofing was known in South America upward 
of a century since. In a work entitled La Monarchia 
Indiana^ printed at Madrid in 1723, we find described 
"very profitable trees in New Spain, from which there 
distill various liquors and resins." Among them is de- 
scribed a tree called ulquahuill^ which the natives cut 
with a hatchet, to obtain the white, thick, and adhesive 
milk. This, when coagulated, they made into balls, call- 
ed ulli^ which rebounded very high when struck to the 
ground, and were used in various games. The author 
continues: "Our people (the Spaniards) make use of 
their ulli to varnish their cloaks^ made of hempen cloth, 
for wet weather * which are good to resist water, but 
not against the sun, by whose heat and rays the ulli is 
dissolved." India-rubber is not known in Mexico at the 
present day by any other name than that of ulli y and 
the oiled-silk covering of hats very generally worn 
throughout the country by travelers is always called 
ulli. Shoes (worn in some countries as over-shoes) have 
also long been made of Caoutchouc in its native country. 
This is done by dipping the wooden lasts in the Caout- 
chouc milk, and then drying them over the smoke of a 
fire made with palm-nut. The coatings arc repeated 



450 VULCANITE. 

until the shoes are sufficiently thick, a greater number 
being given to the bottom or sole. 

The grand improvement in the texture and qualities 
of the substance, by which its appUcability to different 
purposes has been greatly enlarged, is called vulcanizing^ 
and was not made till 1843, and seems then to have 
been brought about by something like an accident. In 
1842, Mr. Hancock was shown small bits of Caoutchouc, 
which an American agent said would not stiffen by cold, 
and were not much affected by solvents, heat, or oil. To 
give Caoutchouc the property of remaining flexible under 
all circumstances and changes was most desirable. Mr. 
Hancock was again set wondering, or was stimulated by 
the assertion ; the small bits of Caoutchouc so changed 
smelt of sulphur. He made all kinds of experiments in 
the direction thus indicated, and at length ascertained 
that the desired alteration was effected in the Caout- 
chouc by exposing it to the action of sulphur at a high 
temperature. "Had I known," he says, after he had 
ascertained the fact, "the simple mode by which this 
result could be produced, I might have made the discov- 
ery at once." 

Caoutchouc, thus acted on by sulphur, retains its per- 
fect elasticity in all temperatures, and, vulcanized under 
pressure, can be made in all forms hard and durable. It 
can be turned in a lathe, and cut into screws. It has 
been made into flutes, which sound easily and sweetly, 
and are so polished as to resemble ebony. Of it are 
made walking-sticks and picture-frames, and delicate 
mountings of all descriptions. A collection of beauti- 
fully made articles of this class can be seen in the " Vul- 
canite Court," at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham. It is 
converted into whips, hard, like wood, at the handle, and 
flexible, hke the finest kind of leather, at the thong. It 
has some most remarkable properties. A ball will pass 
through it ; and the hole closes so completely that per- 
sons who have tried the experiment would not believe 
the fact till it was demonstrated by the ball striking ob- 
jects beyond the rubber. Apiece two inches thick and 
a foot square was laid on an anvil under Mr. Nasmyth's 
steam-hammer ; a six-inch round shot was placed on the 
rubber ; the hammer was then made to fall on the shot 



VULCANITE. 451 

with tremendous force, which was broken to pieces, 
while the rubber on which it was laid remained as 
elastic and uninjured as when it was placed on the anvil ; 
nay, more extraordinary still, the shot had come into 
contact with the anvil, and was flattened slightly, but 
the rubber had retained, or immediately resumed, its 
original form and condition. 

When Mr. Hancock showed the first piece of his 
"solid rubber" to an old gentleman, it was returned 
with the prescient remark, " the child is yet unborn who 
Avill see the end of that."* Ever since, the trade and 
the manufacture have been progressive here and in every 
other part of the civilized world. Within the memory 
of this generation — in less than forty years — an entirely 
new art has grown up from India-rubber bottles, and it 
is forever increasing. It is by no means the only art 
which has come into existence in the time, and attained 
an astonishing perfection. Moreover, all these new arts 
— the manufacture of rubber, photography, railways, 
telegraphs, etc. — are already common to all the civilized 
woild. 

The great consumption of Caoutchouc has naturally 
led to its being sought in other regions than that in 
which it was first found. It was at first principally 
imported from Para; but considerable quantities have 
since been brought from Java, Penang, Singapore, and 
Assam. In the latter country it has been obtained from 
trees in vast forests 100 feet high and 74 feet in girth. 

* Personal Narrative of the Origin and Progress of the Caoutchouc 
or India-Rubber Manufacture, etc. By Thomas Hancock. 

Note. — There is dispute as to the discovery of the processes by 
which these difficuhies were surmounted. On one side, Mr. Charles 
Goodyear is said to have labored for five years in the research of the 
secret, and, at last to have discovered it by accidentally placing some 
pieces of rubber against a hot stove, and noticing that they charred 
instead of melting. This discovery, combined with Mr. Hayward's 
previous adaptation of sulphur as a dryer of rubber, is said by Mr. 
Goodyear's friends to have led him to invent the vulcanizing process. 
Mr. Goodyear claims to have made his discovery in 1839 ; but the 
first authentic evidence of the fact is the patent obtained in 1844. 
Of course, we do not pretend to adjudicate a dispute which has exer- 
cised so many lawyers' wits. It is curious, however, that both dis- 
coverers should have hit upon the same name for their discovery — 
vulcanization. — Am. Ed. 



GUTTA PEECHA AND ITS MANUFAC- 
TUEES. 

This wonderful substance appears to have been brought 
for the first time into England in the days of Tradescant, 
" King's Gardener" to Charles I. ; and it is believed to 
have been shown in Tradescant's Museum, at South Lam- 
beth, as a curious product, under the name of Mazer- 
wood, of which bowls and goblets were formerly made. 
Subsequently it was often brought from China and other 
parts of the East, in the form of elastic whips, sticks, etc. 
The specimens of two centuries since probably lay in 
Tradescant's Museum neglected, and the knowledge of 
its importance and value in the arts seems to have been 
reserved for the age of the Electric Telegraph, since the 
use of this substance for inclosing its metallic wires en- 
titles it to a share in the success of the Submarine Tele- 
graph, by means of which the great cities of the world 
are now brought within a few minutes of each other. 

The reappearance of Gutta Percha in our times resem- 
bles a rediscovery. It is obtained from the Isonandra 
Gutta plant, of the order Sajyotaeece^ and was found by 
Mr. Thomas Lobb v/hile on a botanical mission in Singa- 
pore and the Malay peninsula, where forests of the Percha 
trees grow to an enormous size, this discovery being 
made more than three centuries after the country had 
been frequented by Europeans. Early in 1843, Dr. 
William Montgomerie, in a letter to the Bengal Medical 
Board, commends Gutta Percha as likely to prove useful 
for some surgical purposes; and in the same year he 
transmitted to the Society of Arts in London a specimen 
of the Gutta Percha, at one of their evening meetings : 
the Society then simply acknowledged the receipt of the 
gift, but subsequently presented to Dr. Montgomerie 
their gold medal. It was ascertained from Sir James 
Brook, the Resident at Sarawak, that the tree is indige- 
nous to that place, and is known to the natives by the 
name of Niato; and the doctor's curiosity was first 



GUTTA PEKCHA. 463 

aroused by noticing the handle of a chopper in the hands 
of a Malay woodman made of this novel material, which 
he found could be moulded into any form by immersing 
it into boiling water until it was thoroughly heated, when 
it became plastic as clay, and regained when cold its 
original hardness and rigidity. In its native country it 
is commonly used for whips, and it was by the introduc- 
tion of a horsewhip made of this substance that its exist- 
ence was made known in Europe. Specimens shown in 
the Great Exhibition of 1851 proved that the Malays 
knew also how to appropriate Gutta Percha to the man- 
ufacture of vases, and that European industry had little 
more to do than to imitate their processes. The first 
articles manufactured of it in England, in 1844, were a 
lathe-band, a short length of pipe, and a bottle-case, 
which had been made by hand, the concrete substance 
being rendered sufiiciently plastic by immersion in hot 
water ; casts from medals were also early taken with it. 
Mr. Francis Whishaw thus early discovered the valuable 
property which Gutta Percha possesses for the convey- 
ance of sound, and accordingly made of it the Telakou- 
phanon, or Speaking Trumpet, through which, by simply 
whispering, the voice could be audibly conducted for a 
distance of three quarters of a mile, and a conversation 
by this means kept up. Another of its early applications 
was as the soles of shoes. In its pure state, Gutta Percha 
is indestructible by water, and is an excellent non-con- 
ductor of electricity ; hence it was used in making a tube 
for the conveyance of the wires of the submarine tele- 
graph, and was first so employed across the Hudson 
River, New York. 

Gutta Percha is, like Caoutchouc, a carburet of hydro- 
gen, and isomeric with that substance ; and while it pos- 
sesses a great number of the properties which character- 
ize Caoutchouc, it also exhibits certain special properties 
which admit of its being applied to particular uses to 
which Caoutchouc is not adapted. 

In 1845, only 20,000 lbs. of Gutta Percha were import- 
ed into England ; now the consumption has increased to 
millions of pounds annually. Its manufacture into an 
endless variety of articles demands new processes, new 
machines, and new tools, in which the steam-engine plays 



454 USES OF GUTTA PEECHA. 

the most important part. The rough blocks of gum are 
first cut into slices by a vertical wheel, faced with knives 
or blades, and revolving 200 times a minute ; the slices 
are then cleaned from stones and other impurities, and 
boiled in w^aste steam from the engine. The mass is 
next put into an iron box, or teaser, in which an iron 
cylinder with teeth rapidly revolves, and tears it into 
shreds, throwing it into vats of cold water. There the 
Gutta Percha floats at the top, and the impurities sink 
to the bottom. It is then transferred to tanks of boiling 
water, and thence removed into boxes, and kneaded like 
dough ; and next rolled between heated iron cylinders 
into sheets, which are then cooled by passing between 
steel rollers. The sheets are cut by a knife-edged ma- 
chine into bands or strips. For making tubes and pipes, 
the soft mass of kneaded Gutta Percha is passed through 
heated iron cylinders, and is drawn by the drawing-mill 
into cylindrical cords, and tubes of various diameters. 
This, however, is but a glimpse of the complicated ma- 
chinery and processes by which Gutta Percha is fash- 
ioned into a legion of articles. Among the applications 
are breast-coatmg for water-w^heels, galvanic batteries, 
shuttle-beds for looms, packing for steam-engines and 
pumps, cricket-balls, noiseless curtain-rings, whips and 
sticks, policemen's staves, plugs or solid masses used in 
buildings, buffers for railway-carriages, gunpowder can- 
isters, sheet-covering for damp walls, lining for ladies' 
bonnets, jar-covers, bobbins for spinning machines, book- 
covers, moulds for stereotype and electrotype, coffin-lin- 
ings, and stopping for hollow teeth. These are but a 
small number of the myriads of uses to which we have 
extended the application of the vegetable product which 
was used by the Malays ages since for a few common 
purposes. 

It may be interesting to add that both Gutta Percha 
and Caoiitchouc plants may be seen growing in the Roy- 
al Gardens of Kew, and cases of articles made of the two 
substances are shown there in the Museum of Economic 
Botany. 

In estimating the various aids and appliances to the 
success of the Submarine Telegraph, it is scarcely possi- 
ble to overrate the properties of Gutta Percha. It would 



GUTTA PERCHA AND ELECTRICITY. 455 

seem as though one were sent to perfect the other ; for 
the coating of the telegraph-wire with Gutta Percha, 
thereby insuring its entire insulation, is a most import- 
ant provision. 

The employment of Gutta Percha in electrical experi- 
ments was first noticed by Faraday in 1848, who stated 
its use to depend upon the high insulating power which 
it possesses under ordinary conditions, and the manner 
in which it keeps this power in states of the atmosphere 
which make the surface of glass a good conductor. The 
telegraph-wire is not only coated with Gutta Percha, 
but is closed in tubing made of it. For this purpose the 
Gutta is dissolved in bisulphuret of carbon ; the wire is 
passed over pulleys through the solution, and then through 
a tube lined with brushes, which remove any thing super- 
fluous ; and when the wire reaches the second pulley, the 
bisulphuret has evaporated, and left a thin coating of 
Gutta Percha. Where the wire is to be roughly handled, 
it is covered with cotton, and then passed through the 
solution ; but the tubing is still more effective. Great 
feats of dispatch have been accomplished in this applica- 
tion. One day, in 1849, a coil of copper wire 12,200 feet 
long was coated at the Company's works in the City 
Road with sulphureted Gutta Percha, and shipped for 
the Russian government, within twenty-four hours of its 
arrival at the works. 



THE ELECTEIC TELEGEAPH. 

The great secret of instantaneous transmission has 
long exercised the ingenuity of mankind in various ro- 
mantic myths ; and the discovery of certain properties 
of the loadstone gave a new direction to those fancies, 
the majority of which can scarcely be traced. Many of 
the ancient stories of ubiquity which we find related as 
facts are doubtless of this fabulous origin ; and in the 
present instance, credulity being, as it were, -backed by 
science, there was some method in the popular belief. 
To such a source may be traced in modern times the 
earliest anticipation of the Electric Telegraph, the mar- 
vel of the science of the present age ; the discoveries in 
which, and their application to useful ends almost as soon 
as made, give this science a peculiar interest. The an- 
ticipation to which we have just referred occurs in the 
Prolusiones of the learned Italian Jesuit Strada in 1617, 
who supposes the existence of " a species of loadstone 
which possesses such virtue that if two needles be touch- 
ed with it, and then balanced on separate pivots, and the 
one be turned in a particular direction, the other will 
sympathetically move parallel to it." He then directs 
each of these needles to be poised and mounted parallel 
on a dial having the letters of the alphabet arranged 
round it. Accordingly, if one person has one of the dials 
and another the other, by a little prearrangement as to 
details, a correspondence can be maintained between 
them at any distance by simply pointing the needles to 
the letters of the required words. Strada, in his poet- 
ical reverie, dreamed that some such sympathy might 
one day be found to exist in the magnet ; but his conceit 
does not seem to have caught Bishop Wilkins, who, in 
his book on Cryptology, strangely fears lest his readers 
should mistake Strada's fancy for fact, it being altogether 
imaginary, having no foundation in any real experiment. 

Addison, in the 241st number of the Spectator^ 1712, describes 
Strada's '' Chimerical correspondence;" and adds that, '* if ever this 



EXPERIMENTS IN ELECTRO-TELEGRAPHY. 457 

invention should be revived or put in practice," he ^' would propose 
that upon the lover's dial-plate there should be written not only the 
four-and-twenty letters, but several entire words which have always a 
place in passionate epistles, as flames, darts, die, language, absence, 
Cupid, heart, eyes, being, drown, and the like. This would very much 
abridge the lover's pains in this way of writing a letter, as it would 
enable him to express the most useful and significant words with a 
single touch of the needle." 

When electricians had become acquainted with the 
new force by friction, then the only known method of 
generating electricity, they renewed their experiments. 
In 1729, one Stephen Gray, a pensioner of the Charter 
House, made electrical signals through a wire 765 feet 
long ; yet, in those dull times, this success did not excite 
much attention, ^ext, Le Monnier's account of his feel- 
ing the electric shock through an acre of water at Paris 
by means of an iron chain, led Dr. Watson, and other 
Fellows of the Royal Society, in 1745, to make a series 
of experiments to ascertain how far electricity could be 
conveyed by means of conductors. 

They caused the shock to pass across the Thames at Westminster 
Bridge, the circuit being completed by making use of the river for 
one part of the chain of communication. One end of the wire com- 
municated with the coating of a charged phial, the other being held 
by the observer, who in his other hand held an iron rod, which he 
dipped into the river. On the opposite side of the river stood a gen- 
tleman, who likewise dipped an iron rod in the river with one hand, 
and in the other held a wire, the extremity of which might be brought 
into contact with the wire of the phial. Upon making the discharge, 
the shock was felt simultaneously by both the observers. — Priestley's 
History of Electricity , v 

In 1747, the same persons made experiments near 
Shooter's Hill, when the wires formed a circuit of four 
miles, and conteyed the shock with equal facility; "a 
distance which, without trial," they observed, " was too 
great to be credited." These results established two 
great principles: 1, that the electric current is transmis- 
sible along nearly two miles and a half of iron wire ; 2, 
that the electric current may be completed by burying 
the poles in the earth at the above distance. These ex- 
periments were performed at the expense of the Royal 
Society, and cost £10 5^. Qd, In the paper detailing 
them, printed in the 45th volume of the Philosophical 
Transactions^ occurs the first mention of Dr. Franklin's 

IT 



458 EXPERIMENTS IN ELECTRO-TELEGRAPHY. 

name, and of his theory of positive and negative elec- 
tricity. 

In the following year, 1748, Benjamin Franklin per- 
formed his celebrated experiments on the banks of the 
Schuylkill, near PhiladeljDhia, which being interrupted 
by the hot weather, they were concluded by a picnic, 
when spirits were fired by an electric spark sent through 
a w^ire in the river, and a turkey was killed by the elec- 
tric shock, and roasted by the electric jack before a fire 
kindled by the electrified bottle. In two years Frankhn 
made his more celebrated experiment to determine the 
identity of Lightning and Electricity, as described at p. 
336, 337. 

In the year 1753 there ajDpeared in the Scots'' 3Iagazme 
definite proposals for the construction of an electric tele- 
graph requiring as many conducting wires as there are 
letters in the alphabet ; it was also proposed to converse 
by chimes, by substituting bells for the balls. A similar 
system of telegraphing was next invented by Joseph 
Bozolus, a Jesuit, at Rome, and mentioned by the great 
Italian electrician Tiberius Cavallo, in his treatise on 
Electricity. 

In 1787, Arthur Young, when traveling in France, saw 
a model w^orking telegraph by M. Lomond : " You write 
tw^o or three words on a paper," says Young ; " he takes 
it with him into a room, and turns a machine inclosed in 
a cylindrical case, at the top of which is an electrometer, 
a small, fine pith-ball ; a ware connects with a similar 
cylinder and electrometer in a distant apartment ; and 
his wife, by remarking the corresponding motions of the 
ball, whites down the Avords they indicate, from which it 
appears that he has formed an alphabet of motions. As 
the length of the ware makes no difference in the eflfect, 
a correspondence might be carried on at any distance." 

On January 31, 1793, Volta announced to the Royal 
Society his discovery of the development of electricity 
in metallic bodies. Galvani had given the name of An- 
imal Electricity to the power W'hich caused spontaneous 
convulsions in the limbs of frogs when the divided nerves 
were connected by a metallic wire. Volta, however, saw 
the true cause of the phenomena described by Galvani, 
which have passed imder his name as Galvanism by an 



EXPERIMENTS IN ELECTKO-TELEGRAPHY. 459 

error similar to that which gave the name of Amerigo 
Vespucci, instead of Columbus, as the discoverer of the 
'New World. Observing that the effects were far greater 
when the connecting medium consisted of two different 
kinds of metal, Volta inferred that the principle of ex- 
citation existed in the metals, and not in the nerves of 
the animal ; and he assumed that the exciting fluid was 
ordinary electricity, produced by the contact of the two 
metals. The convulsions of the frog consequently arose 
from the electricity thus developed passing along its 
nerves and muscl es. Hence the term Voltaic Electricity. 

The following year, according to Voigfs Magazi7ie^ 
Reizen made use of the electric spark for the telegraph ; 
and in 1798, Dr. Salva, of Madrid, constructed a similar 
telegraph, which the Prince of Peace exhibited to the 
King of Sj^ain with great success. 

In 1802 it was discovered that the earth might be sub- 
stituted for the return wire of a voltaic circuit. 

In 1809, Soemmering exhibited to the Academy of 
Sciences at Munich an electro-telegraphic apparatus, in 
which the mode of signaling consisted in the develop- 
ment of gas-bubbles from the decomposition of water 
placed in a series of glass tubes, each of which denoted a 
letter of the alphabet. In 1813, Mr. Hill, of Alfreton, in 
Hampshire, devised a voltaic electric telegraph, which he 
exhibited to the Lords of the Admiralty, who spoke ap- 
provingly of it, but declined to carry it into effect. And 
in the following year Soemmering constructed a similar 
telegraph, but with this inconvenience — that there were 
as many wires as signs or letters of the alphabet. 

The next invention is of much greater practical worth. 
Upon the suggestion of Cavallo, Francis Ronalds con- 
structed a perfect electric telegraph, employing frictional 
electricity, although Volta's discoveries had been known 
in England for sixteen years. This telegraph was ex- 
hibited at Hammersmith in 1816, the very year in which 
Andrew Crosse, the electrician, said, " I prophesy that 
by means of the electric agency Ave shall be enabled to 
communicate our thoughts instantaneously with the 
uttermost parts of the earth." Ronald's telegraph con- 
sisted of a single insulated wire, the indication being by 
pith-balls in front of a dial : when the wire was charged 



460 oersted's electro-magnetism. 

the balls were divergent, but collapsed when the wire 
was discharged; at the same time were employed two 
clocks with lettered disks for the signals. Ronald's 
success was complete ; nevertheless, the government of 
the day refused to avail itself of his telegraph. 

In 1819, Professor Oersted, of Copenhagan, who had 
for some years asserted the identity of chemical and elec- 
trical forces, announced his great discovery of the inti- 
mate relation existing between magnetism and electricity, 
in consequence of his having, while lecturing to his class, 
observed that a magnet, when placed near a wire con- 
ducting a voltaic current, was strangely deflected. And 
upon the Copley Medal being adjudicated to Oersted for 
his discovery, he demonstrated that " there is always a 
magnetic circulation round the electric conductor ; and 
that the electric current, in accordance with a certain 
law, always exercises determined and similar impressions 
on the direction of the magnetic needle, even when it 
does not pass through the needle, but near it." Thus 
Oersted laid the foundations of the science of electro- 
magnetism, and led the way to its practical application 
to the Electric Telegraph, although, in the popular ac- 
counts of the invention, we hear much more of the adapt- 
ers of his researches than of Oersted himself, to whom 
the main merit is due. "Nothing," says Professor 
Owen, " might seem less promising of profit than Oer- 
sted's painfully-pursued experiments with his little mag- 
nets, voltaic pile, and bits of copper wire, yet out of these 
has sprung the Electric Telegraph." 

Dr. Hariiel, of St. Petersburg, states that Baron Schil- 
ling was the first to apply Oersted's discovery to tele- 
graphy by actually producing an electro-magnetic tele- 
graph simpler in construction than that which Ampere 
had hnagined. 

Sturgeon next conceived the idea of involving soft 
iron with copper wire, and, by circulating voltaic elec- 
tricity through these convolutions, of rendering it power- 
fully magnetic. The experiment proved the correctness 
of the thought, and electro-magnets of enormous power 
have been the result. These have enabled Faraday to 
discover and enunciate the laws of voltaic and magneto- 
electric induction. Light and magnetism are proved to 



WHEATSTONE AND COOKE'b ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. 461 

be mysteriously related, and all bodies in nature have 
been shown to exist in one of two conditions — they are 
either magnetic^ as iron is, or they are dia-magnetic^ like 
bismuth and glass. 

In 1835, Gauss and Weber established electro-tele- 
graphic communication between the Observatory at 
Gottingen and the University. In Professor Airy's ex- 
periments with the Electric Telegraph, several years 
after, to determine the difference of longitude between 
Greenwich and Brussels, the time spent by the electric 
current in passing from one observatory to the other 
(270 miles) was found to be rather more than the ninth 
part of a second, this determination resting on 2616 ob- 
servations. Such a speed would " girdle the globe" in 
ten seconds. During all this time the Voltaic Battery 
was gradually improved, and its powers vastly augment- 
ed, by Daniell and Grove. 

In 1836, Professor Muncke, of Heidelberg, who had 
inspected Schilling's telegraphic apparatus, explained the 
same to William Fothergill Cooke, who in the following 
year returned to England, and subsequently, with Profess- 
or Wheatstone, labored simultaneously for the introduc- 
tion of the Electro-magnetic Telegraph upon the English 
railways, the first patent for which was taken out in the 
joint names of these two gentlemen. 

In 1844, Professor Wheatstone, with one of his tele- 
graphs, formed a communication between King's College 
and the lofty shot-tower on the opposite bank of the 
Thames : the wire was laid along the parapets of the 
terrace of Somerset House and Waterloo Bridge, and 
thence to the top of the tower, about 150 feet high, 
where a telegraph was placed ; the wire then descended, 
and a plate of zinc attached to its extremity Avas plunged 
into the mud of the river, while a similar plate attached 
to the extremity at the north side was immersed in the 
water. The circuit was thus completed by the entire 
breadth of the Thames, and the telegraph acted as well 
as if the the circuit were entirely metallic. Shortly after 
this experiment. Professor Wheatstone and Mr. Cooke 
laid down the first working Electric Telegraph on the 
Great Western Railway, from Paddington to Slough. 

In 1845, by the Electric Telegraph, then laid from Paddington to 



402 THE SUBMARINE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH, 



1 



the Slough Station, on the Great Western Railway, John Tawell was 
captured on suspicion of having murdered Sarah Hart at Salt Hill on 
Jan. 1 . Tawell left Slough by the railway on that evening ; and at 
the same instant, by Telegraph, his person was described, with instruc- 
tions to the police to watch him on his arrival at Paddington. Thus, 
while the suspected man was on his way to London at a fast rate, the 
Telegraph, with still greater rapidity, sent along the wire which skirts 
the road the startling instructions for his capture ; and in the metrop- 
olis he was followed, apprehended, and identified. This early em- 
ployment of the Telegraph produced in the public mind an intense 
conviction of the vast utility of this novel application of man's philos- 
ophy to the protection of his race. 

The first newspaper report by Electric Telegraph appeared in the 
Moniing Chronicle, May 8, 1845, detailing a railway meeting held at 
Portsmouth on the preceding evening. On April 10, in the same 
year, a game of chess was played by Electric Telegraph between 
Captain Kennedy, at the Southwestern Raihvay terminus, and Mr. 
Staunton, at Gosport : the mode of playing was by numbering the 
squares of the chess-board and the men ; and in conveying the moves, 
the electricity traveled backward and forward during the game upward 
of 10,000 miles. 

On Nov. 13, 1851, the Submarine Electric Telegraph between Dover 
and Calais was first worked for the public ; and the opening and clos- 
ing prices of the Paris Bourse were transmitted to the Stock Ex- 
change, London, during business hours. 

In America, the Submarine Electric Telegraph was in- 
vented by Professor Morse, who, in 1822, while on his 
passage from Liverpool to New York, maintained the 
passage of electricity through wire to be instantaneous 
to any distance, and that it might be made the means 
of conveying and recording intelligence. For thirteen 
years he pursued his experiments, and in 1835 patented 
his " Recording Electric Telegraph," in the same year 
that Wheatstone in England, and Steinheil in Bavaria, 
invented a Magnetic Telegraph of entirely different con- 
struction. Morse uses the steel point for indenting the 
paper, and renders the instrument more powerful and 
certain by substituting electro -magnets for needles. 
Morse next attempted Submarine Telegraphing between 
Governor's Island and Castle Garden, New York ; and 
in October, 1842, interchanged messages, and laid the 
first cable of copper wire, one twelfth of an inch in di- 
ameter, insulated by hemp coated with tar, pitch, and 
India-rubber. From this success Morse inferred that a 
telegraphic communication upon his plan might be estabr 
lished across the Atlantic. In 1844 he completed the 



THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH. 463 

first Electric Telegraph in the United States, and in 1856 
his claim to the invention of the writing apparatus was 
accorded. 

Before the Atlantic Telegraph was finally decided on 
here, 2000 miles of subterranean and submarine telegraph 
wires, ramifying through England and Ireland, under the 
Irish Sea, were connected, and through this distance of 
2000 Ailes 250 distinct signals were recorded and print- 
ed in one minute. In 1857 the Atlantic Cable was com- 
pleted, the length of iron and copper wire spun into it 
being 332,500 miles, or sufficient to engirdle the earth 
thirteen times : the cable w^eighed about a ton per mile, 
and was incased in Gutta Percha. A submarine cable, 
when in the water, is virtually a lengthened-out Leyden 
jar; it transmits signals while being charged and dis- 
charged, instead of merely allowing a single stream to 
flow evenly along it. The electro-magnetic current 
possesses treble the velocity of simple voltaic electricity ; 
and with a single pair of zinc and silver plates (1-2 0th of 
a square inch large), charged by a single drop of liquid, 
distinct signals have been efiected through 1000 miles 
of the cable, and each signal was registered in less than 
three seconds of time. The Perpetual Maintenance Bat- 
tery, for working the cable at the bottom of the sea, con- 
sisted of large plates of platinated silver and amalgamated 
zinc, mounted in ten cells of Gutta Percha, each cell con- 
taining 2000 square inches of acting surface, worked at 
the cost of one shilling per hour. This voltaic current 
was the primary power used to call up a more speedy 
apparatus of '' Double Induction Coils," w^hile a fresh 
battery did the printing labor.* The attempts to lay 
this cable in August, 1857, failed through stretching it 
so tightly that it snapped and went to the bottom, at a 
depth of 12,000 feet, forty times the height of St. Paul's. 
The cause of this failure was frankly confessed. "The 
best workmen," said the engineers, " were worn out with 
fatigue ; the second-best took their places, and put on 
the brakes unskillfully ; the cable snapped ; and that is 
the long and short of the matter." 

This great work was resumed in August, 1858, and on 
the 5th the first signals were received through two tlioii- 
* By Mr. Wildman Whitehouse, the eminent electrician. 



464 THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH, 

Hand and fifty unties of the Atlantic Cable, when the en- 
gineer-in-chief, Mr. Charles Bright, was knighted. And 
it is worthy of remark, that just 111 years previously, on 
the 5th of August, 1747, Dr. Watson astonished the sci- 
entific world by practically proving that the electric cur- 
rent could be transmitted through a icire hardly two 
iniles and a half long. 

The success, however, lasted but for a few dayS^or on 
September 1st the Cable ceased to w^ork, and it has con- 
tinued useless up to the present time. 

A little north of the 50tli parallel of latitude, at the bottom of the 
Atlantic Ocean, where the plateau is unbroken by any great depres- 
sion, and on a soft bed of mud, constantly thickening, and composed 
almost entirely of carbonate of lime, there lies now some 1500 miles 
of disabled telegraphic cable, deposited in the summer of 1858, at a 
depth varying from 10,000 to 15,000 feet. The wire was sufficiently 
thick to resist any strain it was thought likely to have to bear. 
Whether, however, it may not, where partially injured, have become 
melted by the intense heat evolved during the passage of magnetic 
storms through the earth, and even of the strong magnetic currents 
employed in communicating the early messages, is a question that has 
not yet been answered ; but, at any rate, it is in the highest degree 
probable that in the course of time the copper would have become 
reduced to the crystalline state, and the cohesion of the metal reduced 
so as to render it incapable of resisting even a very small strain. 
These and other difficulties may arise, and will have to be overcome. 
Meanwhile the great problem of telegraphy is solved.* The power 
that attracts the needle to the pole, and has for centuries guided the 
navigator across the surface of the water, is now rendered available 
in providing means of communication through its hitherto unfathom- 
ed depths, and the girdle is being put round the world which will, at 
no distant time, unite all civilized nations into one great brotherhood. 
— Westmiiiste?' Review, October, 1859. 

In soundings taken along the telegraph plateau, speci- 
mens of the animals and vegetables found at the bot- 
tom of the Atlantic have been brought up, of which the 

* The following statement of the actual number of messages that 
passed across the Atlantic during the time when the condition of the 
wire was still doubtful, will show clearly how complete was the success, 
and how great the certainty that submarine lines will ultimately be 
laid. Exclusive of conversations among the clerks, 97 messages, con- 
sisting of 1002 words and 6476 letters, were sent from Valentia to 
Newfoundland, and duly comprehended ; while 269 messages, of 2840 
words and 13,743 letters, were received from Newfoundland in Ire- 
land. This gives a total of 366 messages, consisting of 3942 words, 
made up of 20,219 letters, actually transmitted. — Westminster Review. 
No. 32, N. S. 



ELECTRICITY APPLIED TO THE ARTS. 



465 



accompanying engraving represents a highly-magnified 
group. It includes Forammifera^ beings which secrete 
many-chambered calcareous shells, each the habitation 
of a group of individuals so minute as to require the 
highest powers of the best microscope to perceive them. 
With these are intermixed Diatomacece^ the simplest 
tribes of the simplest plants, whose remains form a sensi- 
ble proportion of the silicious part of the ooze on which 
the" telegraph cable rests. 




Highly-magnified animals and plants brought up from the Atlantic Telegraph 
plateau. 

The Applications of Electricity to the Arts are too numerous to be 
specified here ; but a few of the more prominent instances must be 
noticed. The new arrangement of Franklin's discovery by Sir Snow 
Harris, in lightning conductors, has already been mentioned. The 
firing of gunpowder by electricity beneath the water, as an agent in 
blasting and exploding, has led to the safer and more economical re- 
covery of sunken property, and the execution of vast engineering 
works. Hopes have been stpongly excited that the electro-magnetic 

U2 



466 THE ELECTRO-MAGNETIC LIGHT. 

current may be so modified as to act as a moving-power for machin- 
ery, and in lieu of steam, wind, water, and animal power ; locomotive 
carriages by land, and small vessels on rivers, have been impelled by 
electro-magnetism, but at too great a cost for adoption. As the mov- 
ing power of clocks, electricity is employed with great success for in- 
dicating exactly the same time in any number of places distant from 
each other. Electro-metallurgy, or the working in metals by electri- 
cal agency, was first illustrated by Professor Jacobi, of St. Petersburg, 
and Mr. Spencer, of Liverpool, and the precipitation of the precious 
metals from the solution led to electro gilding and plating, in place 
of the usual process of gilding and plating. By this process watch- 
springs are electro-gilded, to prevent oxydation ; and the great metal 
dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral at St. Petersburg, which weighs nearly 
2000 tons, has been electro-gilded with 274 lbs. of ducat gold. To 
Mr. Spencer we also owe the application of electricity to the multi- 
plying copies of works of art — in the electrotype, a valuable improve- 
ment also upon stereotj^e for printing surfaces. Plates are etched 
and multiplied by electricity. The uses of electricity as a curative 
agent, or as a means of physiological investigation, are veiy striking. 
The electro-luminous experiments have led to the introduction of the 
Electric Light for public purposes ; but its costliness greatly restricts 
its popular service. This wonderful illuminating power has been 
adapted to light-houses ; and in 1859 the upper South Foreland light- 
house, near Dover, was lighted by the electro-magnetic light, by Pro- 
fessor Holmes. The electricity is not evoked by a voltaic battery, 
but is the result of magneto-electric induction, the current being ob- 
tained by about 85 revolutions per minute. The light is visible for 27 
miles, and can be seen from the tops of the light-houses on the coast 
of France. 



GENERAL INDEX. 



Abacus, the Eoman, 204. 

yVchromatic glass, 226. 

Adams, Mr., discovers the planet Nep- 
tune, 25T. 

yEolopile, the, 274. 

Aerial Navigation, problem of, 120. 

'•'■Aerial Ship" at New York, 119. 

Aeronauts, the first, 95, 96, 102. 

Aeronaut, the first female, 106. 

Aerostation first attempted in Scotland, 
105. 

Aerostation, practical, 105. 

Air-gun, the, 51. 

Air-pump, efl'ects of the, 55, 56. 

Airy and Brewster on the great Rosse 
Telescope, 244. 

Albertus Magnus, his Head of Brass, 73. 

Altitude, gi'eatest, in a Balloon, 111. 

Andreani, the Italian aeronaut, 103. 

Applegath and Cowper's Printing Ma- 
chines, 41. 

Arago on Papin's Steam Models, 278. 

Archimedes, death of, 17 ; Inventions of, 
15 ; Screw of, 15, 17. 

Archimedean Screw Propeller, the, 395. 

Architonnere, by Archimedes, 131, 273. 

Archytas's Wooden Pigeon, 73, 95. 

Aristotle and the Diving-bell, Gl. 

Arithmetic, true course of, 200. 

Arithmetical Machine, Morlarj^'s. 157. 

Arkwright, Sir R., account of, 297-301. 

Arnold's Time-keepers, 178. 

Astley's Air-balloon, 106. 

Astrology applied to Anatomy by Para- 
celsus, 133. 

Atmosphere, best, for telescopic observa- 
tions, 245. 

Automata, ancient, 72; and Black Art, 
75. 

Automatic Actors, 75 ; Boys, by Droz and 
Maillardet, 78. 

Automaton Chess-player, the, 86-92. 

Automaton Skeleton, 75. 

Automaton Writer and Louis Philippe, 
82, 83. 

Babbage's Analytical Engine, 207. 

Babbage's Difference Engine, 207. 

Bacon, Friar, his Brazen Head, 73, 121 ; 
true history of, 121. 

Bacon, Lord, his birth and boyhood, 141 ; 
his death and will, 144; Diving-ma- 
chine, 62; "New Philosophy," 141- 
145; his Nommi Orcfannm., 142. 



Bacon, Roger, and Diving-machine, 62 : 
Flying-machine, 95; Gunpowder, 40, 
124; his inventions, 124; at Oxford, 
122; Pope Clement IV., 123; the Tele- 
scope, 212 ; writings of, 125, 126. 

Baconian Philosophy, its value, 144, 145. 

Balloon Ascent, extraordinary, 110; the 
first, 100 ; first in England, 104 ; Lana, 
96; Observations, scientific. 111, 112; 
Voyage, first in England, 106, 107. 

Balloons in Military Operations, 109, 110. 

Balloons by the Montgolfiers, 99-108. 

Barometer, the, invented, 50. 

Beaufoy and Graham's Balloon, 112. 

Beckmann and Brewster on Automatic 
Statues, 72, 73. 

Beckmann on Rupert's Drops, 152. 

Beer-engine, Bramah's patent, 371. 

Bell's '*■ Aerial Machine," 119. 

Bernal Collection, Palissy Ware in, 265. 

Bidder, Mr. George, and Mental Calcula- 
tion, 198-203; reminiscences, 201-203. 

Biot on the action of Fluids on Light, 
250. 

Black, Joseph, the chemist, 340, 341. 

Blanchard and Gamerin's Parachutes, 
115. 

Blanchard and Jefferies cross the English 
Channel in a balloon, 107. 

Blasco de Garay's Steam-machine, 275. 

Block Machinery, by Brunei, 396, 397. 

Block Printing, ancient, 30. 

Blood, Circulation of the, 181 ; its Cause, 
hypothesis of, 186 ; its Course, 184, 185. 

Bontemps's Optical Glass, 229. 

Borelli's Diving-machines, 64. 

Boulton, Mr., constructs a Balloon, 104; 
Watt's partner, 287. 

Bramah, Joseph, Inventions of, 370-372 ; 
Hydraulic press, 371 ; Locks, 370. 

Brancas's Steam-machine, 276. 

Brande, Prof., on Paracelsus, 134. 

Brewster, Sir David, on the Automaton 
Chess-player, 89 ; his Kaleidoscope, 
250, 251 ; on the Microscope, 246 ; on 
Newton's Principia^ 224; Telescope, 
212. 

Bridge, the Menai Suspension, 374r-376. 

Bridgewater Canal, the, 363. 

Brindley, James, and Canal Navigation, 
361-364 ; his mill machinery, 362. 

Brioschi's Balloon Observations, 112. 

British Association Balloon Results, 112. 

Brougham, Lord, his inscription on 



468 



GENERAL INDEX. 



Watt's Statue, 294, 205; Newton's j 
Principia^ 224. | 

Brunei, Sir I. M., Block Machinery and 
Thames Tunnel, 396-401 ; his Circular 
Saws, 39T, 398; workshops at Batter- 
sea, 398. 

Brunei, I. K., Railway Works and Iron 
Steam-ships, 426-431 ; hirth and edu- 
cation, 426; death, 431; Docks by, 427, 
429 ; Great Britain and Great Western 
iron steam-ships, 429 ; Great Eastern^ 
430 ; Great Western Railway, 428 ; 
Thames Tunnel, 427 ; Thames Tunnel 
Diving - bell, 61 ; Tubular Railway 
Bridges, 428. 

Bude Light, the, 360. 

Burning Mirrors, large, 253-255. 

Burning Well at Wigan, 354. 

Calculating Machines, various, 204r- 
211. 

Calculation, Mental, by Mr. George Bid- 
der, 198-203. 

Caledonian Canal Works, 374. 

Camera Obscura invented by Leonardo 
da Vinci, 128. 

Camus, M., his Automata, 75. 

Canal Navigation in England, 361-364. 
"-Canals, invention of, 361. 
>CCandle Bombs, Hooke on, 155. 
/ Caoutchouc, first known, 447; introduced 
into England, 447; manufactures by 
Hancock and Macintosh, 448, 451; 
vulcanized, 450 ; water-proofing, 449. 

Carcel and his Lamp, 352. 

Carlingford, Lord, his Aerial Chariot, 120. 

Cartwright, Dr., his Power-loom, 311- 
313 ; his Steam-carriage, 313. 

Cavendish, Black, and Cavallo on Hydro- 
gen, 98. 

Caxton brings Printing into England. 
35 ; his burial-place, 36. 

Century of Inventions^ by the Marquis 
of Worcester, 162. 

Chantrey's Statue of James Watt, 294. 

Char Volant and Kite Caniage, 119, 120. 

Charles V., Diving Experiments before, 
61 ; patronizes Automata, 74. 

Charles H. wagers with the Royal Soci- 
ety, 58. 

Charles and Robert, the aeronauts, 103. 

Chelsea, Silk Garden at, 327. 

Chess-player, th^ Automaton, 86-92. 

Chest, Carved, John Lombe's, 324. 

China, Gas-lighting in, 355, 356; Gun- 
powder in, 43-45 ; Magnet known in, 
22. 

Choke-damp and Fire-damp discovered, 
340-342. 

Chronometer, the first Marine, 176. 

Circulation of the Blood, 181-187. 

*' Circulator," the epithet, 184. 

Clayton, Dr., his Gas Experiments, 354. 

Coal-gas first used, 354; first used in 
Balloons, 111. 

Coal Mines, Gases in, 341. 



Cocking killed in a Parachute descent, 
115. 

Columbus and the Variation of the 
Needle, 26. 

Compass, Discovery of the, 25, 26. 

Cotton, early use of, 315, 316 ; in Egypt, 
316 ; in the Middle Ages, 316 ; in va- 
rious countries, 316. 

Cotton Manufacture, the, 296-318; Ark- 
wright's Patents, 300; Arkwright's 
Spinning-frame, 297; Calico-printing 
and the Peels, 313^15; Cartwright's 
Power -loom, 311; Cromford Works, 
300, 301 ; Crompton, Samuel, and the 
Spinning - mule, 302-311; Crompton, 
neglect of, 310 ; Hargreaves' Spinning- 
jenny, 296; the Hall-in-the- Wood de- 
scribed, 305 ; Hall-in-the- Wood or Mus- 
lin Wheel, 307 ; Kay's invention, 298 ; 
Kennedy, Mr., on Crompton's inven- 
tion, 307; Need and Strutt, 298: Paul, 
Louis, and Wyatt, John, 306 ; Peel, Sir 
R., and Crompton, 309 ; Peels, the, and 
Calico-printing, 313-315 ; Spinning Ma-i 
chinery, 316; Spinning-mule, Cromp- 
ton's, 309 ; Spinning by RoUers, 300 ; 
Value of Manufacture, 317. 

Crompton, Samuel, his family, 302. 

D.EDALU8, his inventions, 72. 

Daguerre and the Diorama, 434. See 
Photography. 

Dalswinton Steam-boat Experiments, 386. 

Davy, Sir Humphrey, and the Safety- 
lamp, 343-351 ; birth and boyhood of, 
343, 344 ; Chemical prize, 350 ; death 
of, 350 ; honors to, 349 : Model Safety- 
lamp, Davy's, 347 ; and Prof. Faraday, 
350; at the Royal Institution, 344; and 
the Royal Society, 349; Safety-lamp, 
by Clanny, 346; Stephenson, 347, 348; 
Safety -lamp, Davy's theory of, 346, 
347; Scottish estimate, 345; various 
researches of, 344, 345. 

De Caus's Steam-engine, 275, 276. 

De Luc's Balloon Observations, 111, 112. 

De Morveau and Bertrand, the aeronauts, 
104. 

De Rozier and D'Arlandes, the aeronauts, 
102. 

De Rozier and Remain's Montgolfier, 107. 

Degennes, General, his Automaton Pea- 
cock, 76. 

Derby, Lombe's Silk-mill at, 324. 

Diving Apparatus, old, 64. 

Diving-bells in America, 63 ; the earliest, 
61 ; at the Polytechnic Institution, 59 ; 
principle and application of, 65. 

Diving, Prof. Faraday on, 60. 

Docks constructed by Telford, 374. 

DoUond, John, his Telescope improve- 
ments, 226. 

Drops, Rupert's, submitted to the Royal 
Society, 153. 

Droz's Automaton Boys, 78. 

Du Mouliu's Automnta, 76. 



GENERAL INDEX. 



469 



Dunin, Count, his Expanding Model, 84. 
Dutens' Account of the Automaton Chess- 
player, 87. 

Eagle, artificial, by Regiomontanus, 74. 

Eddystone Light-house, the, huilt hy 
Smeaton, 366-368. 

Egg's Fish Balloon, 119. 

Electric Clocks, 466. 

Electric Light, the, 466. 

Electric Telegraph, the, 456; Addison's 
Spectator^ 456, 457; Airy, Professor, 
461 ; Atlantic Cable, 463 ; Bright, Sir 
Charles, 464; Crosse, Andrew, 459; 
Franklin, Dr., 458 ; Gauss and Weber, 
461 ; Gray, Stephen, 457 ; Great West- 
ern Telegraph, 461; Hamel, Dr., 460; 
Hill's Voltaic-electric, 459 ; Lomond, 
M., 458 ; Messages, Atlantic, 464 ; 
Morse, Professor, 462; Oersted, Pro- 
fessor, 460 ; Eonalds, Francis, 459 ; 
Soemmering, 459; Strada's Prolusio- 
nes^ 456 ; Sturgeon's Experiments, 460 ; 
Submarine, 462 ; Volta and Galvani, 
458; Watson, Dr., his Experiments, 
457; Wheatstone and Cooke, 461 ; Wil- 
kins. Bishop, 456 ; Young, Arthur, 458, 

Electricity, Applications of, to the Arts, 
465, 466. 

Electro-magnetic Engine, 466. 

Electro-metallurgy, 466. 

Ellesmere Canal Works, 374. 

England, Printing brought into, 35. 

Etruria, Village founded by Wedgwood, 
271. 

Euler, his blindness, 196; his Letters to 
a German Princess^ 195; his Powers 
of Calculation, 196. 

Evelyn Family's Gunpowder-mills, 48. 

Evelyn, John, visits Sir S. Morland, 156. 

Fabee's Speaking Machine, 82. 

Faenza Ware and Palissy, 261. 

Faraday and Davy, Anecdote of, 350 ; on 
Diving, 60 ; Optical Glass-making, 226. 

Felkin, Mr., and Silk Culture, 327. 

Fire-engine, the, invented, 158. 

Fly, Iron, 74. 

Flying Chariot, Bishop Wilkins's, 97. 

Flying, imitative, 95. 

Folly, Friar Bacon's, at Oxford, 122, 126. 

Framework Knitters' Society, 331. 

France, Printing introduced into, 35. 

Franklin, Dr., proves the identity of 
Lightning and Electricity, 336, 337; 
his grave, 337. 

Frauenhofer's Optical Glass, 227. 

Frederick the Great and the Automaton 
Chess-player, 87. 

French, Mr., his Life and Times of Sam- 
uel CroyY\,pton<^ 302. 

^'Fulton of the Orrery," Account of, 172. 

Fulton, Robert, and Steam Navigation, 
391-393. 

Galen, overthrow of, 184. 



Galileo's blindness, 217 ; his first Survey 
of the Heavens, 215, 216; his first 
Telescope, 215; the invention of the 
Telescope, 212-218 ; and the Pump, 50, 
51. 

Galley of Hiero, 19, 20. 

Garnerin's Balloon Ascents, 110. 

Gas, Coal, process of making, 359. 

Gases, Chemistry of the, 340-342. 

Gas-lighting in China, 356, 357 ; Cotton- 
mills, 356; in England, 357; Progress 
of, 357-360. 

^^ Gauging the Heavens," 235. 

Gay-Lussac's Balloon Observations, 112. 

Geometry, uses of, 20. 

George HI., his munificent patronage of 
Herschel, 237. 

Glass for Telescopes, Guinand's, 226, 227. 

Glass-house, Prince Rupert's, Chelsea, 
150. 

Going Fusee, Harrison's, 178. 

Graham, George, his Improvement of the 
Watch, 170-174. 

Gravatt, Mr., F.R.S., and Scheutz's Dif- 
ference Engine, 210. 

Greek Fire and Gunpowder, 46. 

Green, Charles, his Balloon Ascents, 111. 

Guinand's Glass for Telescopes, 225-229 ; 
his Secret, 228. 

Gunpowder and the Arabs, 46 ; brought 
into Europe, 45 ; in China, 44, 45 ; first 
made in England, 47, 48; improved by 
Prince Rupert, 148; Manufacture of, 
49 ; Who invented it ? 43. 

Gutenberg invents Printing, 81; Statue 
of, 33. 

Gutta Percha and its Manufactures, 452 : 
and the Electric Telegraph, 455; firr.o 
brought to England, 452 ; Malay Inge- 
nuity, 453. 

Guzman's Flying Bird and Basket, 97. 

Hallam on Leonardo da Vinci, 127, 128. 

Halley, Dr., his Apparatus for Walking 
under Water, 69 ; his improved Diving- 
bell, 66; on Living under Water, and 
the Diving-bell, 60, 65. 

Hampton's Parachute Descent, 116. 

Harrison, John, and the Longitude Watch, 
175-179. 

Harvey, Dr. W. , and the Circulation of 
the Blood, 180-187. 

Helmholtz, Prof., on the Au--gun, 57, 58; 
on Automata, 82. 

Henri II. and Palissy the Potter, 262, 266. 

Henson's '•'- Aerial Transit Machine," 116. 

Hero's Steam Apparatus at Alexandria, 
275. 

Herschel, Sir John, on the Barometer, 50, 
52 ; on Paracelsus, 134. 

Herschel, Sir W., Account of, 231; As- 
tronomical Discoveries, 237; discovers 
Uranus, 233; his Telescopes, 230, 233, 
235, 237. 

Hiero's Crown and Archimedes, 15, 16; 
his Galley described, 19, 20. 



470 



GENERAL INDEX. 



Ilooke, Dr., his Microscope, 24S. 
Houdin, his Account of the Automaton 

Chess-player, 90-92 ; his Automata, 82- 

84; repairs Vaucanson's Automaton 

Duck, 76. 
Hudibras and Rupert's Drops, 153. 
Hutton, William, his Account of Lomhe's 

Silk-mill, 323, 324. 
Hydrogen Balloon, first Voyage in, 103. 
Hydrogen Gas discovered, 98. 
Hydrostatics, Wonders of, 54. 

Indian Muslin, Manufactm'e of, 317, 318. 
Italy, Pi-inting in, 35. 

Jack of Hilton, ^olopile, 274. 
Jacquard, ingratitude to, 335 ; his Loom, 

332-335. 
James II. encourages W. Phipps, 63, 64. 
Jenner, Dr., his Character, 193, 194; his 

Discovery of Vaccination, 188-194; 

Grants to, 192; Statue of, 193, 194. 
Johnson, Dr. S., and Gas-lighting, 357. 
Julien's Balloon-fish, 119. 
Justinian and Silk Culture, 319. 

Kaleidoscope, Sir D. Brewster's, 250- 
252. 

Kempelen, De, his Automaton Chess- 
player, 86-92; his Speaking Automa^ 
ton, 81. 

Kircher and the Speaking-trumpet, 157, 
158. 

Kite, Electric, by Franklin and De Eo- 
mas, 336-338. 

Klingert's Water-armor, 70. 

Lamp, Carcel's, 352, 353. 

Lamp, Safety. See Davy. 

Lana's Theoretic Balloon, 96. 

Le Roy, the French Horologist, 172. 

Lee, William, and the Stocking-frame, 
323-331. 

Leibnitz's Calculating Machine, 206. 

Lens, the earliest, 246. 

Lenses in Diving-Bells, 68. 

Leonardo da Vinci, his Discoveries, 127- 
131. 

Leuwenhoeck's Microscopes, 248. 

Lever to move the World, 18. 

Leverrier discovers the Planet Neptune, 
257. 

Lights, new Artificial, 360. 

Light-house, Eddystone, built by Smea- 
ton, 367, 368. 

Lightning Experiments by Dalibard and 
Deloz, and Richman, 338, 339 ; Frank- 
lin's, 336-838; Rods, Sir W. Snow 
Harris's, 339. 

Limbs, Artificial, by Van Petersen, 92. 

Lippersheys and the Telescope, 213, 214. 

Living under Water, 59. 

Lombe, John, his Journey to Piedmont, 
321; his Silk-mill, 319, 322-324; Sir 
Thomas Lombe' s, and the Silk Manu- 
facture, 323, 324, 



^' London Black" Dye, 321. 
London first lit with Gas, 357. 
London and Oxford compared, 122. 
Longitude at Sea, Discovery of, 179. 
Longitude Watch, the, 175-178. 
Loom invented by Jacquard, 332-335. 
Louis Philippe ascends in a Balloon, 104. 
Lowther, Sir J., and Gas-lighting, 355. 
Lunardi, first Aeronaut in England, 106. 

Maelzel's Musical Automata, 79. 
Magic Mirrors and Burning Lenses, 253- 

255. 
Magnet, Properties of, 21 ; Traditions of 

the, 22, 23. 
Magnetic Disturbances of the Earth's 

Surface, 172 ; Line without Variation, 

27; Mountain, 22; Needle, the, 23; 

Wagon, the, 24. 
Maillardet's Automata, 79. 
Man, Model, Expanding, 84, 85. 
Mariners' Compass, use of the, 24, 25. 
Mary Bose Vessel, and Diving-bell, 62. 
Merton College, Oxford, an early home 

of science, 122. 
Mezzotinto Engraving and Prince Rupert, 

146-147. 
Microscope, Invention of the, 246-249; 

extended use of, 248. 
Microscopic Examination of the Blood, 

184, 185. 
Milton and Galileo, 216. 
Mirrors, gigantic, 253. 
Monck Mason's Archimedean Screw for 

Balloons, 116. 
Money, Major, the Aeronaut, 108. 
Monge's Copper Balloon, 119. 
Montgolfiers, the Aeronauts, 99, 104. 
Montgolfier Balloon in 1838, 111. 
Moore's Steam-carriage, 292. 
Morland, Sir Samuel, his Inventions, 156- 

160 ; and the Steam-engine, 277. 
Moure t's Account of the Automaton Chess- 
player, 90. 
Mudge's Chronometers, 179. 
Mulberiy Garden, St. James's Park, 327. 
Murdoch's Gas-lighting, 356-358. 
Musical Automata, 79. 
Muslins, Indian, 317, 318. 

Napier's "Bones," or "Rods," 140, 204; 
Burning Mirrors, 139; his meeting 
with Henry Briggs, 140; Logarithms, 
140; Machine for destroying Turks, 
138; Sailing under Water, 139; Salt Ma- 
nure, 139 ; Secret Inventions, 136-140. 

Nassau Balloon, Green's, 111. 

" Nature abhors a Vacuum," 50. 

Navigation of the Air, 95-120. 

Nautilus, the Submarine, 70. 

Neptune, Planet, discovered, 256-259. 

Newcomen's Atmospheric Engine, 282. 

Newton at Cambridge, 219; his early 
amusements, 219; makes his first Tel- 
escope, 220-224; Principia, 222-224, 
254; Statue of, 223. 



GENERAL INDEX. 



471 



Nightingale, Automaton, by Houdin, 83, 
84. 

OrTic Lenses discovered by R. Bacon, 

124. 
Orrery, the, invented, 112. 

Palissy the Potter, Story of, 260-26T ; in 
the Bastile, 266; his religious faith, 
266 ; his Ware, origin of, 262. 

Panharmonica, by Maelzel, 79. 

Papin's Digester, 280; his Steam-engine 
improvements, 2T8. 

Paracelsus, Story of, 132-135 ; his original 
discoveries, 133. 

Parachute descents, 115, 116. 

Parker's Great Burning Lens, 254. 

Parsonstown, Lord Rosse's Telescopes at, 
239-242. 

Pascal's Arithmetical Machine, 204-206; 
the Barometer, 51; early sagacity of, 
52, 53; Hydraulic Press, 3T1 ; weighs 
the Atmosphere, 53, 54. 

Peel, Sir Robert, Statue of, 315. 

Peels, Rise of the, 313-316. 

Petin's "Aerial Navigation," 119. 

Phipps, William, and the Diving-bell, 
63, 64 ; and the Mulgrave Family, 64. 

Photography, 432-441 ; chromatype and 
collodion, 438 ; colored images, 439 ; 
Daguerreotype, the, 435-437 ; Davy, 
Wedgwood, and Wollaston, 432 ; germ 
of the art, 432 ; Iodine, 439 ; Niepce 
and Daguerre, 433-435 ; Ritter and 
Scheele, 432 ; and the Stereoscope, 439 ; 
Talbot, Fox, and Talbotypes, 436, 437 ; 
Young, Dr., 433. 

Play fair on Da^^^'s Safety -lamp, 348. 

Porta, Baptista, and the Telescope, 214. 

Portland Vase, Wedgwood's copies of, 
269, 270. 

Power-looms introduced, 313. 

Prince's Metal, Invention of, 148. 

Printing Machine, the, 40-42; Iloe's 
American, 42; Vertical, 42. 

Printing from Movable Types, 30 ; Press- 
es, ancient, 32, 37. 

Printing, Varieties of, 29 ; who invented, 
and where ? 29. 

Prismatic Spectrum, the, exhibited by 
Newton, 220. 

'■'• QuENcn-FiRES," Sir S. Morland's, 158. 

Raglan Castle and the Marquis of Wor- 
cester, 161, 168. 

Reflecting Telescope, Lord Rosse's Great, 
241-244. 

Regiomontanus, fabulous inventions of, 
74, 95. 

Rennie, John, his Breakwater at Plym- 
outh, 381 ; Canals, Docks, and Bridges, 
378-381 ; improves the Diving-bell, 69 ; 
mill-works, 378, 379. 

Roberts and HuUin's Heated-air Balloon, 
107. 



Roebuck, Dr., and the Steam-engine, 
287. 

Rosse, the Earl of, his Reflecting Tele- 
scopes, 239, 245. 

Royal George wreck surveyed by the 
Diving-bell, 69. 

Rupert's Drops, history and description 
of, 152-155; his inventions, 146-151. 

Sadlers, the aeronauts, 104, 110. 

Safety-lamp. See Davy. 

Safety-valve invented by Papin, 280. 

Savery, Captain, account of, 279 ; his 
Steam-engine, 278. 

Schoeffer, Gutenberg, and Fust, printers, 
32. 

Scheutz's Difference Engine, 209. 

Schwampan, the, in China, 204. 

Schwartz the reputed inventor of Gun- 
powder, 46. 

Shield in the Thames Tunnel Works, 401. 

Silk, Consumption of, in England, 327; 
Culture in England, 327; in Greece 
and Rome, 320. 

Silk Stockings in England, 320, 321, 328. 

Silk-throwing established in England, 
321. 

Silk Throwsters of London, 321. 

Silkworm in China and Constantinople, 
319. 

Slough, Sir W. Herschel at, 237. 

Small-pox, ravages of, 188, 189. 

Smeaton and the Empress Catharine of 
Russia, 264; first uses the Diving-bell 
in civil engineering, 69 ; John, Light- 
houses and Harbors by, 365-369. 

Soho Works at Birmingham, 290-293. 

Somerset House, Telford working at, 373. 

Spain, Printing introduced into, 35. 

Spalding improves Halley's Diving-bell, 
68. 

Speaking Machine, American, 81 ; the 
Euphonia^ 82 ; principle of, 80. 

Speaking Trumpet, Morland's, 157, 158. 

Spectacle Glasses and the Telescope, 214. 

Spectacles, Invention of, 125. 

Specula for Telescopes, Grinding and 
Polishing, 240. 

Spinning and Weaving, antiquity of, 316. 

Staffordshire Potteries, increase of, 271. 

Stanhope Printing-press, 39. 

Statues, ancient automatic, 72. 

Staunton, Mr., his account of the Autom- 
aton Chess-player, 87. 

Steam-boat, the first practical, 382-395; 
Allen and Dickens's, 384; Bell's Com- 
c?, 393; Bl'amah's propeller, 385 ; Char- 
lotte Dundai^^ 388; Chinese paddle- 
wheel, 382 ; Dawson, in Ireland, 394 ; 
Dodd, George, 304; France, experi- 
ments in, 384; Fulton, Kobert, 389, 
890 ; Fulton's Catamaran and Torpedo, 
303; Genevois, J. H.,384; Gravesend, 
Richmond, and Margate, 394; Great 
Wefitern and Great Britain, 394 ; 
Horse-tow vessel, 383; Hulls, Jona- 



472 



GENERAL INDEX. 



than, 384 ; Industry^ the oldest steam- 
er, 893; Miller and Taylor's experi- 
ments, 387 ; Napoleon I. and Fulton, 
390, 391; Ocean Steamers, 394, 395; 
Paddle-wheel, ancient, 382; Papin's, 
383; Ramsey's paddle-wheels, 382; 
Savannah, 394 ; Savery's, 383 ; Sime, 
Mr., his account of Fulton, 391; Sym- 
ington's steam-boat engine, 386 ; Sym- 
ington's experiments, 386; Syming- 
ton's fate, 390 ; Wasborough, Matthew, 
385; Watt's improved engine, 384, 
385 ; Sun and Planet wheel, 385. 

Steam-carriage, Cartwright's, 313. 

Steam-engine, history of the; -lEolopile, 
274; Arago, on Papin's improvements, 
278 ; Architonnere of Archimedes, 273 ; 
Beighton, 282 ; Blasco de Garay, 275 ; 
Brancas, 276 ; Busteric, the metal god, 
273 ; Cornish engines, 289 ; De Caus, 
275; Hero of Alexandria, 275; Mor- 
land. Sir S.,277; Newcomen, 281; Pa- 
pin, D., 277; Pekin, experiments at, 
274; Savery, 278; Staffordshire Jack 
of Hilton, 274; Watt, James, 282-295; 
Worcester, Marquis of, his Hydraulic 
Machine, 276 ; Zeno's house blown up 
by steam, 273. 

Steam Gun, anticipated, 131, 273. 

Steam-power, ancient, 273; applied to 
Warfare by Archimedes, 131; British, 
295. 

Steering Balloons attempted, 108. 

Stephenson, George, the- Railway En- 
gineer, 402-413; birth of, 402, 403; 
education of, 404, 405; Liverpool and 
Manchester Line, 409-411; Locomotive, 
Darlington, 408, 409 ; Locomotive, im- 
proved, 410, 411 ; Locomotive, Killing- 
worth, 407; Newcastle Factory, 409; 
Rocket Prize Engine, 411-412; Rail- 
way, benefits of, 402 ; Railways, origin 
of, 406; Railway System, 407; Rail- 
way Works, various, 413; Speed ridi- 
culed, 408; Statues of, 413. 

Stephenson, Robert, and Railway Works, 
414-425; Battle of the Gauges, 419; 
birth and education of, 414-417 ; Bogie^ 
Planet^ and Rocket engines, 417, 418; 
Conway and Britannia Bridges, 420; 
death of, 424 ; Funeral in Westminster 
Abbey, 424 ; Institution of Civil En- 
gineers, 423 ; Kilsby Tunnel, 418 ; Lon- 
don and Birmingham Tunnel, 418; 
visits South America, 417; Victoria 
and High-level Bridges, 419 ; Victoria 
Bridge, Canada, 422 ; his zeal for sci- 
ence, 423. 

Stereoscope and its applications, 441-444 ; 
Brewster's Lenticular Stereoscope, 443 ; 
Euclid, Galen, and Porta, 447; Leo- 
nardo da Vinci, 441 ; Wheatstone, Pro- 
fessor, 442. 

Stocking-frame, Invention of the, 328. 

Stocking- weavers' Hall, Picture in, 331. 

Submarine Operations at Glasgow, 62. 



Syracuse, Siege of, 17. 

Telescope Glass, Improvements in, 226 ; 
Telescope, Hadley's improved, 230; 
Invention of the, 212-218 ; Newtonian, 
230, 231; Reflecting, Newton's first, 
221 ; Sir W. Herschel's, 233-236 ; Lord 
Rosse's described, 241-244. 

Telford, Thomas, and the Menai Suspen- 
sion Bridge, 373-377 ; Bridges built by, 
373; a Shepherd- boy, 373; his Statue 
in Westminster Abbey, 377. 

Teredo navalis and Thames Tunnel, 399. 

Terra Cotta, Wedgwood's, 271. 

Thames Tunnel, Account of the, 308-401. 

Thetis Wreck, and temporary Diving- 
bell, 70. 

Thornthwaite's Apparatus for Walking 
under Water, 70. 

Tompion and Graham, the Watchmakers, 
grave of, 173. 

Torricelli and the Barometer, 50. 

Tower of London, the Marquis of Worces- 
ter confined in, 163. 

Triewald's improved Diving-bell, 67. 

Tripods, ancient automatic, 72. 

Va<X!Ination, Dr. Jenner's Experiments 
in, 191. 

Van Helmont on Flying, 95; on Speak- 
ing-machines, 80. 

Vaucanson, Notice of, 78 ; his Automaton 
Duck, 76 ; Automaton Flute-player, 76, 
77. 

Vauxhall Gardens and Morland, 160. 

Venice, '•'•Galileo's Tube" at, 214, 215. 

Vivian's Balloon Obsei'vations, 112. 

Von Siegen invents ]\Iezzotinto Engrav- 
ings, 147. 

Walking under Water, 69. 

War Instruments, Leonardo da Vinci, 
130. 

Watch, Improvers of the, 170 ; a perfect 
one, 174 ; the smallest Repeater, 178. 

Watches, Graham's, 171. 

Water-armor, by Kessler, 64. 

Water-clock, Charlemagne's, 74. 

Watson, Bishop, on Gas-lighting, 355. 

Watt, James, and the Steam-engine, 273- 
295; Arithmetical Machine, 293 ; birth, 
282 ; and Boulton, 287 ; Copying-press, 
288 ; Cornish Engines, 289 ; eariy life, 
282-284 ; and Glasgow University, 284, 
285 ; Glasgow Water- works, 293 ; his 
great Discovery, 285, 286 ; in London, 
284; Newcomen's Engine Model, 285; 
Parallel Motion, 289 ; at School, 283 ; 
Sculpture Copying - machine, 293 ; 
Sketch of Watt and Boulton, 290; 
Soho Steam-foundiy, 291; Steam-boat 
at Rothsay, 292 ; Steam-carriage, 292 ; 
Steam-engine Improvements, various, 
288, 289 ; Steam-engine Patents, 290- 
292; Steam Navigation, 291; Sun and 
Planet Wheels, 280 ; Tilt-hammer, 289 ; 



GENERAL INDEX. 



473 



Tributes by Arago, Arnott, Brougham, 
Jeffrey, and Wordsworth, 293-295; 
Uniform Weights and Measures, 289 ; 
Westminster Abbey, Statue in, 294. 

Wedgwood, Josiah, and his Wares, 268- 
2T2 ; his " Queen's Ware," 269. 

Westminster Almonry, Caxton's Press, 
36. 

Wheatstone, Professor, and Speaking- 
machine, 81. 

Whitby, Mrs., her Silk Culture, 32T. 



Wilkins, Bishop, on Flying, 01 ; on Speak- 
ing-machines, 80. 

Willis's Speaking-machine, 80. 

Windsor Castle, Prince Rupert in, 151. 

Winsor, his Gas-lighting, 358. 

Worcester, the Marquis of, his Centvrp 
of Inventions, 161-1Q9 ; his Hydraulic 
machine, 276 ; Steam-engine, 16T, 168. 

Zambeccaki, Count, Aeronaut, 104, 105. 



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